I had a late night philosophical debate with the family a few years back on the topic of happiness. The question was, can you choose to be happy?
For me, it was a clear YES. I have always thought that your attitude and reaction towards life is a choice, that you can choose to forgive, forget, move on and be happy, or you can dwell, dwell, dwell, and be miserable. In my opinion, happiness was something you worked on, it was not a constant, and the degree of happiness you feel fluctuated. For example, ice cream makes me happy. But seeing my grandma after 3 years makes me happy too. Which one made me happier?
But according to the opposing party, if you have to choose to be happy, then the happiness you felt is not genuine happiness. They agreed that if you have a certain predisposition and attitude towards life, you are prone to feel more happy more often. But if you’re in a difficult position where you needed to make a choice, that choice you make does not make the happiness you felt real happiness because it’s not instinctive, it’s not automatic. It’s forced.
I kind of had a flashback to this conversation, because up to now, I still held the same belief that I can choose to be happy. Except, I’ve had quite a few things happen to me that are making me question that belief. In the difficult circumstances I’ve had with relationships, school, work and family, if I was the party that was wronged, I chose to recover from it with an attitude of positivity and optimism. I chose to value myself, to “choose happiness” and let go of whatever situation burdened me. But now that I think about it, the aftermath of those decisions never left me feeling happy. At least not genuinely. It was a struggle. I felt like I had definitely chosen happy, but I definitely did not feel it.
What does this all mean? I still have no clue. I’m just thinking out loud. But it definitely hurts my pride to feel like my brother beat me with this argument 😛 In all seriousness, I’m starting to question again what happiness really means to me. Is it something I can have, is it something to want, and if so, why do I want it?… and all that philosophical jibber jabber that drives me nuts. WHAT IS THE MEANING OF LIFE!?!?! hahahaha It’s interesting though, how life can change you, how the beliefs you so firmly believed in before can change in the blink of an eye.