The Deception of The Extreme Happiness

“I, the body with senses incessantly listening to the cosmos, want happiness. And when finally happiness is evoked inside my head, I ungratefully wish there could be more of it.” 

Weirdly lying on a tattered sofa at a corner of my room, I was dwelling on psychology, especially human emotions. Imagine a hairball. Intertwined with manifold strings regarded as emotions, of all entangled strings, happiness was the one that intrigued me the most. Almost every human on the earth gives priority to happiness, and why one shouldn't. It’s not immoral. Besides, one whose pro-attitude gravitates to accumulate happiness should undoubtedly keep it above everything else to experience pure joy. As a result, the aforementioned shallow insight begs the question of how much happiness one needs at a time. Pondering the answer to the question, then and there, I posited - “to experience the state of infinite euphoria is what conscious beings long for”.

I went about untangling the happiness string from the messy hairball of human emotions. I was taken aback to find out that happiness and sadness were the same string. Therefore, on the pretext of comprehending how to transcend the said mental state, that is, happiness, I seek whether humans only desire to be happy or they seek something strange such as unpredictability and pain.

Three Events of My Life

We manifest numerous emotions that are merely some states of mind such as anger, hate, happiness, disgust, surprise, and fear (6 basic human emotions). If we extensively observe ourselves, we can feel the creation and destruction of emotions inside our heads and thereby physiological changes in our bodies.

Let me share three events that shaped my life and further broadened my perception. You may relate to these three events concerning happiness.

Freedom: The First Event

I was probably around eight years old. Many a time, far-flung relatives used to visit us. While departing, they’d often give me a five rupees coin and I’d, therefore, get ecstatic. Out of happiness, I’d do absurd activities such as going to a shop and buying some candies that would completely fill my tiny hands or something strange that would later infuriate my mother. Back then, the freedom to buy ridiculous things I wanted made me happy.

A Little Less Happiness: The Second Event

Day by day, observing the world with my wide-opened eyes, I was nurtured like an ordinary boy who was about to be engulfed in stoicism. Although my physical development wasn’t conspicuous as it was at a slow pace, my brain evolved a bit differently. That was what I used to believe, for I could see events and patterns somewhat deeply. Now, whenever I got twenty rupees from my relatives, it used to make me happy but not that much. Furthermore, I ceased to do the irrational activities I earlier did in such scenarios. Several repetitions of this pattern turned it predictable and less stimulating.

Pleasure: The Third Event

A few years later, the sweet adolescent blossomed in my life. It taught me many more ways to experience pleasure. Now, I wasn’t interested in money that much. All of a sudden, I was getting attracted to damsels at school. Thus, being with a female would make me happy. Her touch and all other things, which could be done by or to a boy who had no idea of the anatomy of the female genitalia, would elate me, and hence the happiness burnt inside me.

Some Emotional Bowls

The happiness on receiving five rupees wasn’t any less than the happiness I got by an arousing touch of the opposite gender. It’s true that we can’t compare the reason for yesterday’s happiness with today’s. Obviously, the event that made us happy yesterday may not make us happy today as it’s merely a repetition thus less triggering.

To understand it better, let us consider that there are different bowls for different states of mind and we can’t feel happier or sadder than the actual size of the bowls that represent states of mind. The bowls remain the same in size throughout life regardless of our richness or poorness, maturity or immaturity, wisdom or foolishness, and other contrasting phases of human life. When you get happy, sad, anxious, confused, and so on, the bowls are completely filled with the said emotional states.

For instance, at the given moment, the happiness of a drunkard on getting a pint of whiskey for free can’t be lesser than the happiness of an entrepreneur on getting an award for the best start-up. Both have different desires in their lives, and satiating those desires will fill their happiness bowls completely.

Similarly, if a destitute person suddenly became rich, the amount of happiness and sadness at a given moment would remain constant in his life irrespective of the money that he recently acquired.

In addition, the bowls are damned or blessed with patterns. The number of active patterns (pathways in one’s brain) associated with the event that evoked an emotional state is the number of leaks in the bowl of the manifested emotional state. How fast or slow bowls get empty depends on your experience with that particular event.

Why Not to Long For Happiness

“Happiness is important” is what we are preached by the people who see happiness as a destination. To my mind, happiness has been given more value than it should actually deserve. Thus, we must learn how to be content, for the bowls of states of mind aren’t going to increase their capacities to hold. Besides that, emotions aren’t intellectual; you’re. Simply put, no amount of change in your life changes the size of the bowls that represent your states of mind. No matter what, you’re going to feel the same amount of happiness, sadness or the other dual states of mind.

In a nutshell, your emotions are independent of the existence of anything that isn’t you. Therefore, instead of unnecessarily attaching yourself to objects and events, set your mind free. Don’t just be a vibrating particle that disturbs and gets disturbed by other particles in motion.

A bare minimum is enough. If it isn’t, nothing shall complete you.

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