Why Your Daily Emotional Challenges Of Existence Will Not Be Solved By Finding Happiness
You will always only be a validation of your own world view
I clicked into an article in The New Yorker about reading making you happier. I thought that it may be a potential article for my weekly newsletter of the best four articles for living longer better (for those over 50). I was wrong.
The opening sentence startled me. It was framed as an aspiration. To me, it was pitiful.
Several years ago, I was given as a gift a remote session with a bibliotherapist at the London headquarters of the School of Life, which offers innovative courses to help people deal with the daily emotional challenges of existence.
The aspiration expressed by the author is that by reading she will find happiness.
I found that pitiful as I felt is that the author has lost the very meaning of her existence by her superstitious thinking about her and her circumstances. We each have only one life to live. Don’t waste yours by viewing it as a series of daily emotional challenges.
Life’s experiences without “going forward” action are worthless
I have had two (potentially) lethal cancers — still marked as “active” on my doctor’s file (as I inadvertently noticed two weeks ago).
I’ve been struck by lightning, crash-landed at LAX in a Boeing 747, been within a few seconds of having to bail out of a sailplane being sucked into a thundercloud, and watched my wife flat-line for 4 hours after giving birth while doctors lost their confidence in what do to next.
Those experiences trigger substantial emotional challenges. But emotional challenges are not life — just as experiences are not life. Life is how you react to and grow from experiences and “challenges”.
If you view life as a series of “daily emotional challenges” then it is one — for you. That’s not growing. It is going in a circle. A vortex, like the water running down the plughole.
Emotional challenges are not what defines you, your choices are
My father was a nasty guy — these days he’d be called brutal. But he was much more brutal with my older brother than me. Dad mellowed a little as he grew older.
During one spat my older brother suddenly stopped backing off and came forward — he sent Dad sprawling backwards onto the floor, and knocked out all of his front teeth, with a well-aimed hook. My older brother had discovered the local boxing gym and developed a new-found confidence in his ability to fight back.
When I turned 18 Dad handed me an envelope and said: “Here’s money for two months rent and food — pack up your bags and get out”. I was bewildered, but I managed, and in retrospect he did me a favour.
I didn’t dwell on Dad’s failings, but I did reflect on them from time to time. That’s why I was genuinely shocked when my younger brother told me, just a few years ago, that he hated Dad and would never forgive him. Dad had died 20 years ago.
I was shocked at what my younger brother said because when I was about 40 I had a revelation about Dad which evaporated my unforgiveness. The revelation may sound puerile, a truism perhaps, but it changed my life.
The revelation came to me that my father was a product of his parents and that he did the best he knew how. I knew that my Dad’s father was an especially brutal man — an Irish immigrant, an alcoholic — and inflicted enormous suffering on my Dad. But I had never connected all the dots before.
At that moment I breathed out. Something that I had been holding inside me for 40 years was released, and I forgave my father and thanked him for doing the best he could — the best he knew how. That’s all any of us can do.
My older brother — Harry — died last year. He refused to forgive our father to the end. I even asked him to do so for me, as a favour for me personally, if he would not do it for himself.
It was not my task to solve Harry’s problems. I don’t regret that he chose not to forgive Dad. But I think taking that kind of unforgiveness to the grave poisons your heart at the time when you most need to open it and release all.
I’m glad I had those experiences, but our life is not defined by such things. Not unless you've been drinking too much of the California psycho-pop Kool-Aid.
Your life is defined by what you choose to do with the experiences that come your way. And those choices that you make are always in the service of some goal that you have attached to yourself.
You may have the goal of seeking attention by aggressive social behaviour — my brother was imprisoned for a time.
You might crave attention — narcissism is highly leveraged by social media. You may have the goal of seeking your parents' attention, by latching onto the psychologists' warnings of what afflictions we can suffer as a result of our past. You can make the choice to be a victim, in the service of your goals. You can have a goal of not failing because you have a fear of failure.
None of those things says anything about life itself. They only speak to your goals and the choices that you make to serve them.
Life is what it is — your perception of what it is reflected in your actions
Life itself is just life.
Life is what is it. It is different from what it was and will be different in the future. What is was in the past doesn’t determine what you make if it now or in the future.
Two people in as equal life circumstances as possible can view life in diametrically opposite ways — and often do. There is nothing intrinsic about human existence that makes it a series of “daily emotional challenges”.
That view is simply the projected belief system of those who see life as a series of problems to be solved and goals to be achieved.
They are propelled by the notion that if they can solve these problems then they will be able to achieve their goals.
If they can solve the problem of a lack of happiness then they will be able to achieve their life goals.
Swipe right and inherit their neuroticism
This is often expressed on Tinder as “I’m just looking for someone who can make me happy”.
Swipe right on that one and you will be sucked into the other party’s “daily emotional challenges of existence”. You will become one of those challenges. It is impossible for you to become part of the solution.
It is impossible because the solution does not lie within any of your powers. There is absolutely nothing you can do to be a solution because the problem is their view of life.
In fact, it is not your task to solve their problems. It’s not your task to help them find their self-worth, to assuage their feelings of inferiority nor to satisfy their desire for attention. All those are their tasks to solve — they have to take the first steps forward themselves.
You can only EVER be a validation of their daily emotional challenges
They are focused on the challenge of their own circumstances. They are the people who say “why me” when cancer strikes. As soon as you come into their life they start to fear to lose you. You create a new “emotional challenge” which validates their world view!
You will always only be a validation of that world view. That’s a waste of your time on earth, even you have chosen the goal of being a victim.
More broadly, the lack of “happiness” will also be a permanent feature of their lives precisely because their world view demands it. When they “find” happiness they will doubt it.
They have become their thoughts and they have become the experience they have created.
The happiness they are seeking already lies within them
These people will defend their “daily emotional challenges” as the“reality” of life, in denial that they have created it. And to maintain their emotional sanity they will make everything around them, and those they attract, fit their world view.
Just to be clear. Reading books is fantastic (follow me on GoodReads).
People who suffer from the daily emotional challenges of existence should read more books.
Let’s hope that they stumble upon insights that help them take responsibility for their thoughts. That responsibility emerges through a realisation that the happiness that they are searching for already lies within them.
But reading for the purpose of finding happiness is an exercise in self-defeat.
The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wisely said that life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.
Life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced — Soren Kierkegaard.
Good luck.
If you enjoyed this post then you might also enjoy my Secret purpose of meditation is to help you escape your addiction to neuroticism and Mindful Passion, Poise and Posture and Not Minding Leads to Confidence, Not Caring to Disengagement and Depression and Optimism is important but it is not the choice between it and pessimism that will help you succeed
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I’m Walter. I write articles on fitness, health, and motivation for men and women over 50. However, curiosity is my main distinction. I’ve been lucky enough to have experienced a bolt of lightning hitting me in Korea, crash landing in a 747 (LAX), being sucked into a thundercloud at 4,000m in a sailplane (Australia), jumping freefall from 3,000m on my 1st ever parachute jump (Florida), and two different lethal cancers. Blog: walteradamson.com
