Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Happiness

I identify myself as a very happy person. Obviously, or you'd be reading a lot more of those "fmylife it suckz so bad" posts. And then you wouldn't read them at all...

Anyways, in Psychology today, we watched an interview with Eckhart Tolle, a spiritual teacher and author. His idea was that we "are not our minds", that "our minds are our worst enemies". "Your mind", he says, "takes over the real you and creates thoughts that make you miserable."

I'm not totally sure I agree. I am, as you know if you read my last blog, a stone-hard athiest. I like to be open-minded, of course, but at the core of my beliefs I believe in what is biological. Our minds are a part of us. I think what Tolle is getting at is our subconscious and our conscious selves. Consciously thinking negative thoughts WILL affect your subconscious. If you think things that are negative consciously, you eventually subconsciously believe them.

It's all about patterns. There are different ways of thinking. Something I think that leads to misery is social expectations.

Let's talk about social dynamics. We all know what high school is like - I'm using high school as an example because it's the situation I am most familiar with. I know that social dynamics continue into workplaces etc, or in some places entire towns. (cough, Powell River, cough.) Anyways, in high school. We have our popular kids, our stoners and our various kinds of social outcasts, and we have those boring kids in the middle that never quite make it into the popular group but are too NORMAL to be any kind of outcast.

I have a theory about social dynamics. Let's start with our popular kids: they're all fucked up. That was not needless profanity. I'm generalizing, I know; there are exceptions. And some of them are just so rich that they manage to fit in - which is our "preppy" group.

But being "fucked up", having some kind of major issue in your life, your mind, your childhood - that's "cool". People respect you. Haven't you noticed that all of us "boring" kids - the nerds, the losers, the ones who just happen to not have anything interesting about them - we're the ones who grow up in middle class homes with loving, supportive parents and wholesome childhoods. Some of us drink and do minor drugs, some of us don't.

And then there's the social outcast kids. I think a lot of them catch on to the fact that "fucked up" is cool. Like the poser emo kids, the ones who are perfectly normal but will dress in dark clothes and write sad poetry.

Now, this is ALL theory. And there are a lot of exceptions. However, in a general sense, it's cool to have issues. The more messed up your life is, the more they love you! If you cope with your issues in unhealthy ways, they'll love you even more! Happy people are never cool. Happy people can be "cute" and "nice" and all that, happy people can be loved but they're never truly cool.

So, with all this pressure to be "cool" and miserable, people fool themselves into thinking our lives aren't that great. Ah! If only you were truly miserable, then all those other miserable people might accept you!

It doesn't work like that. If your life is truly messed up, you aren't going to appreciate some well-dressed fuck in a middle class home who gets  an allowance every week droning on about how "miserable" their lives are! I'm not badly off, but I despise people like that.

Back to patterns. We get used to thinking and saying stuff sucks, because that's what is cool.  You say that your life is bad often enough, you start to believe it. No one can change your mind - and you carry that with you for years and years. Sometimes, for the rest of your life. Ever see those overweight, miserable, middle aged women? THAT COULD BE YOU.

So it's time to change thinking patterns. Be happy with what you got - whatever you got. Even if the kid next door is so much richer, your friend is so much prettier, and you can't get a girlfriend or boyfriend.

Maybe the reason nothing good is happening to you is because you fail to see them coming your way.

2 comments:

  1. Woah, I don't want to be an overweight, miserable, middle aged women. All of this seems very true, especially about the social dynamics. I've never thought though how the dynamics of who fits into what stereotype works; though I'm sure I might notice it more often now.

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  2. Well, and there are exceptions - but you'll see some patterns.

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