Being Happy

A lot of people in our society think of maximizing happiness/pleasure as the main goal in life. A lot of us can't imagine life any other way. It's in our Declaration of Independence. How else would we live if we weren't trying to be happy all the time? Isn't being permanently, perfectly happy the goal? The reason we get up in the morning?

But the truth is that happiness is a feeling. That's really all it is. And like other feelings, you can't feel it all the time. It's not physically possible (at least on Earth). People who are happy almost all of the time have a serious mental condition and are not healthy. It's the same as sadness, anger, fear, or any other emotion. If you only feel one emotion all of the time (depression, irritability, anxiety), something is wrong with your health, and you should see someone for your own sake.

It's not wrong to feel different kinds of emotions or to not be happy all the time. You can't force yourself to feel a certain way, not really. Just because you're not happy does not mean you are a failure or that you are doing something wrong. It just means you don't feel happy right now.

And there's something else. If you pursue happiness all of the time, you'll realize how short your time being happy actually is. You'll have to go to further and further extremes to keep making yourself happy, and it will probably become unhealthy.
I get depressed frequently, but once I realized it wasn't my fault and that I wasn't doing anything wrong- that I wasn't a failure because I wasn't happy- I found a kind of peace. I became, strangely, happier for not trying to be happy.

Feelings are important, but they shouldn't be our main goal in life. You should take note of your feelings, but they shouldn't have the last word. You can't control your feelings. But you never have to let them control you.

It's okay to not be okay.