Are You Happy Now?

I think there are two kinds of happiness: moment-to-moment happiness, and overall happiness.

A given day can swing wildly between happy and sad, but your overall happiness has more to do with overall satisfaction and contentment with life. For example, I have a loving wife and children, and nice home, and a good job. I am happy, and couldn't really ask for more out of life. But one day I might be sick, or the kids will be driving me crazy, or work is especially hard. In those moments I am not happy. But they don't really affect my overall feelings about my life. That is a lot harder to impact. It's kind of like when I'm running and I can look at my current pace or my average pace. It takes more miles of running faster or slower to change the average.

On the bad days I try to reflect on how nothing is really wrong with life, and I have no real cause to complain. I can't say that it always works, but it is helpful to remember that things do get better. 

Just my thoughts. But what do YOU think?

Comments

)en said…
I enjoy thinking about this. People are always talking about happiness vs joy and i find it interesting. I once was chatting with a friend who described her fear of contentment. I don't know if she is afraid of losing it or if she prefers a much more broad range of feelings throughout the course of her day or general life. I'm inclined to think the latter because I sort of feel that way. I said to Sean the other day, sort of freaked out, that I was afraid that i've entered into this sort of lazy contentment. Things are fine, things are good, but is that good ENOUGH? And whether or not I'm satisfied seems to be a completely different question. I wonder if I'm a little bit of a malcontent. I find joy in a LOT of things, but I always want everything in my life to have this deep meaning and this can pose problems in the mundane minutiae where it's like, calm down jen, not everything has to be that way. But the extremes can feel so intoxicating for me that the middle ground can be a little unsettling. That said, when I'm having a bad day it can feel like the total WORST, with little hope of getting out of it, which sucks. Gratitudinal reminders always help me put things into perspective though and I can reset a little which is nice. I have to think about this some more...
November 11, 2017 at 6:12 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I had an onion tied to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now, you couldn't get white onions because of the war; all you could get...

Do you ever get stuck in a conversation that you can’t get out of? I’m not talking about those times when you have to be somewhere else or there’s a rational need to leave, but rather those times when, with every word the other person utters (it’s typically just a two-person conversation), your brain threatens to escape your body and make a break for it. All you can do is try to play some old TV theme songs in your head, or maybe design circuits if you’re the engineering type, all the while searching for an opportunity to escape. Now I’m boring myself just thinking about those situations.
Read more

Thirty Thoughts

1. Is that more hair in the shower drain every morning? 2. What's the big deal? It's just a number with a zero at the end. Why should we consider that significant? 3. Am I still allowed to wear shorts? 4. I need to buy a house within the next five years or we won't have it paid off by retirement age. Then again, my generation won't be able to retire until age 80, so I shouldn't worry. 5. I really should be eating more green, leafy vegetables. If I leave potatoes in the fridge long enough, will that count? 6. Going back to school is getting less and less likely. Then again, sending kids to school will be enough trauma. 7. At least I no longer look like I'm 12, which I did until I was about 23. 8. I will never wear my cell phone on my belt. 9. For some reason, there's a big difference between having a kid and having kid s . 10. You kids get off the lawn! 11. I wonder when my memory will start to go. 12. Inside of me beats the heart of an 18-year-old. At leas...
Read more

Moral Compass

On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being “afraid to step on a blade of grass” and 10 being “I’m gonna kill everyone!”), how bad is it if I were to warm up my car in the morning for 10 minutes before coming to work?
Read more