Opposites

I was reading an article, or actually more of a review, about a book called Going Sane by Adam Phillips today and a lot of what his book had to say triggered different philosophies I seem to always have in my life.

The essence of this book (or what I got from the review that I read) is about how our culture today has obsessing thoughts of trying to be "happy". Part of the article lists off books whose titles include some form of the word "happiness", and mentions how they "arrive unbidden by the hour. "

I think a lot of what this article had to say (http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/healthmindandbody)

is true.

We do obsess about being happy (or unhappy).

Think about it.

There are a lot of unhappy things about the world. And we are told over and over again that the meaning of life it to be happy. That is the goal to strive for. When you look back on your life at an old age you are truly happy with your accomplishments and what has happened in life.

I agree, I think our goal is happiness. But as the book says, our approach to this happiness is making us unhappy.

We think that just because we are going through a rough time in life (could be days, months, years) that we are not doing what we should be doing. That something is "wrong" with the way we are living or the way we are feeling.

But how is the trait of being unhappy suddenly an un-human characteristic?
Who said life had to be perfect and happy all the time?

A lot of you probably think the same way I do, and although this might not be the complete message of the book, it did trigger some thoughts in my own mind.

Going off this unhappy/happy topic...

I think one important thing people have to understand is that life has its opposites. And without these opposites, some things, maybe even all things wouldn't exist (Depending how far you want to go into it).

Let's think about this for a second. In Dane Cooks word's "Chew on it".

How can we be happy without first feeling pain?

How can we be honest without first knowing lies?

How can we be smart without first knowing of morons?

Everything has its opposite, a ying-yang for your boom-bang type dealio. You are going to have negatives in your life regardless of how positive you try to make it. And those negatives are good in the sense that we wouldn't know fully of the positives unless we saw from the other side.

Take for example

love and hate.

If we had a world without hate, everyone would love/like eachother correct?
If everyone loves/likes eachother, would we really know what those emotions were?
Those would just be emotions we always would have. It would be normal emotions. But is our definition of love normal by any means whatsoever? It can't be. If it was, why would something like love be strived for by a majority of the population, if not all?

Now this does not mean that

"Oh Matt thinks that bad things should happen in the world, so lets go beat up
someone or become a murderer or something".

It just means that our life is full of opposites, and yes we will go through negative times. But the thing to do with these negative times is to learn from them, and know that you have just found a new appreciation for positive things in your life.

Because when good things then start to happen, you will love them even more.

So stop worrying about being happy.

And

just

be

happy

I know easier said than done. But its worth a shot for all of you depressed souls out there.

I'll leave you with a quote from Aldous Huxley, brought to you by Sandra Kiume's review of Going Sane by Adam Phillips...

“Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.”