Happiness is Fleeting, Wholeness Persists

I think one of the most important lessons I’ve learned in recovery is that feelings aren’t forever – all of them. Happy, sad, afraid, elated, hopeless, irritated, confused, delighted, embarrassed, ashamed, adored… none of them are permanent states of being, and trying to make them last is an unrealistic goal. 

But we do try, and we really try to hold onto feeling good (especially us addicts and alcoholics). We chase the “good” feelings and try to drive away the “bad” ones. And in doing so, we typically fuck up our lives.

It’s not exclusively an addict thing, though. Americans in general are more inclined to try and be happy all the time. Seriously. There’s been a fair bit of research about the ways that American culture is intensely focused on feeling good or happy or comfortable. And it doesn’t really work. Depression has been steadily on the rise in the U.S. for decades. (Thanks, capitalism and the consumerist drive for more, more, more). 

Even our children’s books (at least until the last couple decades of social/cultural awakenings) tend to be more focused on so-called positive emotions and exciting experiences, and they often fail to display a full range – neglecting to teach children that negative emotions are a normal part of the human experience. 

So, those of us in our thirties and forties and beyond didn’t actually grow up reading about how to navigate a full range of emotions. We got messaging from all over the place that we’re supposed to be happy, and that the goal of life is being happy all the time – an idea that’s both unrealistic and damaging. 

Happiness Isn’t Something “Out There”

We’ve also been taught to externalize our happiness, to tell ourselves, “I’ll be happy when ____.” And that blank is constantly changing: I’ll be happy when I find a better job, when I buy a house, when I move to another city, when I find my partner, when I get a raise… but that’s all just stuff. It can raise our satisfaction with life for a time, but it won’t make us happy in the long run. Research shows that only about 10% of our happiness is determined by external circumstances. The rest comes from within.

Happiness is an emotion like any other, it comes and goes. We can’t be happy all the time. We can’t be anything all the time except present with ourselves – and even that’s a lofty goal. 

A more reasonable, achievable, and long-term satisfying feeling to aim for is contentment, or a sense of wholeness – for being present with our experience (good or bad), appreciating what we do have, and striving to find meaning in the world around us. If we can learn to sit with the full range of human emotions, to have a holistic approach to our feelings, we’re ultimately going to be a lot more likely to find a broad sense of life satisfaction. 

Contentment is a much more persistent state of being than simply being happy. It’s like the difference between climate and weather. I live in Portland, Oregon – a cooler, more rainy climate. It has hot days and sometimes snows, but the relatively temperate climate is one that I really enjoy. Contentment is the climate of our lives; happiness is the daily weather. 

Wholeness Includes Both Happiness and Discomfort

Let me pause here for some context. As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m working toward a long term life/career goal of offering coaching services. It’s been a dream/calling for me for a few years now, and I’m finally taking some concrete steps in that direction. 

I recently began my coursework for a Certificate in Applied Positive Psychology – which I’m super stoked about and is most definitely going to be informing my writing for the next… well, long-ass time since what I’m learning is very much in keeping with the kind fo shit I’ve already been writing about. (It’s also likely going to mean I’ll be a little slower in my posting until I can get back into a rhythm).

The first segment of the course is about Positivity as one of the key facets of well-being. And we’ve been talking a lot about the challenges with the name “Positive Psychology,” since it can be misleading. It’s not just about being positive all the time or thinking positive or turning that frown upside down! It’s about the study of human well-being, how people thrive (in contrast to areas of psychology that largely focus on mental illness and how to heal what’s wrong). Positive psychology works to help people cultivate more of what’s right.

And guess what? That doesn’t mean being happy all the time! It means tolerating discomfort. It means experiencing the full range of human emotions – something, as noted above, most of us are woefully ill-equipped to manage on our own. I’m using terms contentment and wholeness a little bit interchangeably in this post, but being content in/with your life is a state of being that comes from feeling whole. And wholeness means welcoming the whole shebang of human experience.

Wholeness Raises Your Happiness Baseline

We all have a sort of happiness baseline – the level we hang out at or return to between life’s ups and downs. The cool thing is that the baseline can shift. It just takes a lot of consistent effort and small changes. 

Long-term happiness, or raising your happiness baseline (i.e. cultivating a sense of contentment), entails learning to be okay with all of the feelings and recognizing they’ll pass – essentially, in cultivating wholeness. When we can make space in our lives for the more difficult emotions instead of trying to run from them or bottle them up, we can get to the other side instead of staying stuck. And we’ll end up happier in the end.

Running from sadness or trauma or anger just leaves us running, unable to let go or get to the other side. Those “negative” feelings are like the killer in a slasher movie – slowly plodding behind us, always there no matter which way we turn or how fast we run. But if we stop and take a chainsaw to the fucker, then we can actually catch our breathe and relax! [Note: I don’t actually watch scary movies, so that’s not a great analogy, but it’s funny].

There are a LOT of ways to practice accepting and processing negative emotions. Therapy is great for that! As are a tremendous number of books and TED talks and resources to turn to. It’s also going to turn up a lot on this blog. 

But for the time being, the big take away today is that feeling shitty or sad or angry is normal. That if you aren’t super happy in your life right now, that’s okay! It won’t be like this forever, and there are things you can do to work toward improving your life circumstances. But there’s more to that than trying to “be happy.” We’re better off in the grand scheme when we can learn to accept both the highs and the lows, and to appreciate the in-betweens.