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To live is to suffer
| What I want to say is stop listening to this bullshit like "it will get better after you get a girlfriend/buy a new house/start exercising/get a lot of money/literally everything else".
Constantly happy humans died in the process of evolution.
It won't get better.
But it is okay.
| There is beauty in how desperate our position in the Universe is. So, instead of striving for happiness, try to make your life interesting. Just like the guy who solved one of the hardest math problems only to decline the 1,000,000$ prize and live as a shut-in with his mom.
| I mean, I understand that this opinion doesn't really fit the current narrative where we prohibit words because they have a possibility to make someone unhappy. However, this attitude helped we a little bit and might help someone else. I mean, this should be a board of dangerous opinions after all.
| TLDR
Happiness for virgins, misery for chads
| I might be a bit delusional, so provide your feedback if you disagree. I didn't hear stuff like this anywhere else and this is a bit suspicious.
| >I might be a bit delusional
This is about the only thing you got right. Now, I doubt many people want to hold your hand and explain totally obvious things to a depressed shut-in and neither do I so I'll get straight to the punch.
Steadily engaging in activities that makes you healthy and happy will make you cultivate a happier mindset than if you never engaged in these activities.
Happiness is a choice and it takes work. You get *nothing* in life sitting on your ass.
| >>752674
> a depressed shut-in
Nice imagination you got here but I am neither of those, fortunately.
> You get *nothing* in life sitting on your ass
You misunderstood the point. I didn't say that life is retarded and that's why we should just sit here and do nothing. Quite the opposite. I claim that the search for a single point of happiness will lead to nowhere.
| However, even if it is true, we should still try to become better. Not for the sake of happiness, but for the sake of ourselves and others. It might and might not lead to happiness but it doesn't matter. All I am saying is it is ok to experience suffering even when you thought that after achieving something it would stop. That is our biology.
| Many people have the mindset like "after I get a degree I will be happy for the rest of my life". I claim that this mindset is wrong.
| >>752700
>Many people
Who exactly? And why are they relevant?
>>752694
You're clearly mentally unwell, anon. You can't even recognize happiness for what it is. This is a huge telltale sign for depression, which you display many.
| Any serious discussion about happiness must first begin by attempting to define what we mean by the term happiness. In general, happiness can be thought of as an emotional state that reflects a high level of mental and/or emotional well-being. Current scientific perspectives typically frame happiness as a complex binary construct that encompasses subjective elements of both affect and cognition that contribute to well-being.
| You have a misconception that happiness is the same as a consistently positive emotional state.
Being happy doesn't mean you feel pure joy and cheerfulness every hour of every day. Humans aren't designed that way (and think of how annoying you'd be if you were). You experience setbacks, problems, the loss of loved ones. And those negative feelings are an essential part of your emotional life, too.
| Happiness means accepting negative experiences, and having the skills to manage and cope with them, and to use them to make better decisions later.
| When people tell you that exercising, enhancing your social connections, expressing gratitude and even earning money makes you happier they're not bullshitting you. They're 100% right.
If you can't take their word for it they're also backed up by peer-reviewed scientific consensus.
| >>80589b
what part of ">everyone in the world thinks the way i think" is it that you don't understand?
| >>752728 I meant the definition that comes as the first result from google. Which is "Happiness is an emotional state characterized by feelings of joy, satisfaction, contentment, and fulfillment".
It really looks to me like a "consistently positive emotional state". And that is exactly what people were referring to at least in my social circle.
| Also, I understand the wish to refer to peer-reviewed studies but anything related to the human emotion field is REALLY incomplete. To the point where I think it would be better to rely on your personal experience.
| This is like the only exception compared to other fields like climatology, physics, and so on. We just don't understand how our brains work to make us notice anything but correlations.
| A way I've seen it put that seems more clear and true to peoples' experience is that to live is to experience unsatisfactoriness. An awkward phrase but basically unfairness, pain, the inevitability of loss etc...
It still expresses the core of what i think you're saying - that suffering is inevitable but also not all there is to life; thinking we can totally escape it is impossible and alienating; but it can still be reduced in many ways, including by accepting where we can't
| >>752777 basically this. However, I think that a person should not focus too much on how to reduce its own suffering. Just like you said, it is inevitable. While someone might end up trying to do the impossible and waste his entire life.
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| We are biologically programmed to be miserable most of the time. You feel down -> you try to do something to escape pain (usually work) -> you get a bit of recognition with some dopamine and feel happy -> ... -> you feel down.
Look at biographies of famous mathematicians or philosophers. Their lives were fucking horrible most of the time. Yet for some reason, they continued to move forward.