There’s a great misunderstanding about what it means to live a happy life, and it can be summed up in the popular symbol of the smiley face.
Now, I like to smile. I love feeling that kind of glowing, delighted state of emotional bliss. It’s wonderful to be full of joy and love and laughter. But feeling those things doesn’t in and of itself make for a happy life; and just because you don’t happen to feel them in the moment doesn’t mean you are unhappy.
In fact, if simply feeling those emotions all the time was what constituted happiness, then it would be a simple matter to find the right combination of drugs that would perpetually bathe our neurons with joyful chemicals, and we could all be perpetually happy.
But this smiley face view of happiness is not the whole story, at all. And we all know it.
A happy life is an engaged life, an active life, an ethical life, a life that you create; a life you can be happy about, a life you can be proud of.
It is not a perfect life.
If you have a view of happiness that tells you that to feel sad or angry or afraid is a sign of failure, or a moral shortcoming of some kind, you’re actually setting yourself up for a miserable bind. The “negative” emotions of life are just as important as the “positive” emotions, in their own way.
Nobody wants to walk around feeling afraid all the time… or angry, or sad. These feelings, in and of themselves, don’t make you happy either.
But they do provide you with important information about what is going on. Used well, they are responses to actual circumstances.
- Anger is often a response to trespass – if somebody crosses a line where your territory or integrity or values are being violated or crossed, anger lets you know to check this out, and it gives you the emotional energy to push back and protect what matters to you.
- Fear is often a response to perceived or imagined danger. The challenge becomes discerning whether a given feeling of fear is in response to something real or imagined.
- Sadness is often a response to loss. The challenge with sadness can be to let it run its course, and allow other, more positive feelings to come back around.
This list is not exhaustive, of course, but it can give you an idea of the value of some of the emotions that are not as pleasant as the “happier” emotions. (I go into much greater – and very practical – detail in my book, the Mastering Emotions, Moods and Reactions Workbook)
A happy life includes the entire range of feelings, an expansive vision of possibilities, and a grounded and accurate relationship to reality. To navigate your emotional life is to integrate what you feel with a clear assessment of reality, and to choose what you want to do with the information and experience contained within your emotional life.
You don’t want to dwell on and become overwhelmed by fear, or sadness, or anger, but neither do you want to avoid these feelings, or judge them as some kind of moral failing.
For example, grief is a natural response to loss, and when we experience loss it’s also natural for our mood system to drop, lowering our energy and motivation so we can re-assess and adapt to the new circumstances that exist from the loss
Depression is not pleasant, and it is not something to indulge or succumb to, but it is also very human. As a psychological problem, it is generally a symptom of helplessness. But helpless is exactly what we feel in the face of great loss. So depression can be a reasonable and natural response. For awhile: a few months, maybe a year or so.
That doesn’t mean that you ever fully “get over” such a loss. I lost both of my parents over 20 years ago, and I still miss them, and feel sad at times wishing I could see them. But I also don’t walk around obsessed with their loss, or disabled by depression.
Our sadness honors those we have loved and lost. Indulging and ruminating on that loss for too long is a disabling choice, which does not honor those lost, but only serves to make us miserable and ineffective.
So you can see, there is complexity to such emotions, and to such states as depression. They’re experiences to wrestle with, to make sense of, and to integrate into our good and happy lives. They are not to be avoided in the name of some perfect vision of bliss or mindless cheeriness; nor are they to be taken on as a perpetual atmosphere of one’s life.
Aristotle called a state of flourishing, or a happy, successful life well lived, “Eudaemonia.” Britannica.com has an accurate and succinct description: “For Aristotle eudaimonia is the highest human good, the only human good that is desirable for its own sake (as an end in itself) rather than for the sake of something else (as a means toward some other end).”
When I talk about happiness, this is what I mean. Eudaemonic happiness is a way of life. It is something that you do. And actively, purposefully integrating your entire range of emotions is one of the central actions that leads to a flourishing life.
This is not something that anybody does perfectly. Integrating our emotional experience is always a work in progress; but it is something that you can practice, and improve on, and eventually achieve some degree of mastery with.
This is a major task for each of our lives. It is central to what it means to be human. There is not a simple answer to all of our emotional challenges. There is not a drug that will sort it all out for any of us. It takes work, it takes consciousness, and it takes understanding that sometimes life hurts, and then it’s our job to assess the situation, bandage up our wounds and carry on with life as best as we can.
So if you want to live a happier life, but you’ve thought that doing so requires continual triumph or a permanent smiley face, I hope this gives you a little better sense of things.
PS: I’m currently expanding my life coaching practice. Go to my website to sign up for a free 30-minute initial conversation.
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