If Happiness Doesn’t Work, Try Being Unhappy For a Change
By: Ameer Jj
Tags: Babies, Coronavirus, Health, Life, Mental Health

If Happiness Doesn’t Work, Try Being Unhappy For a Change

Marco Ossino

There’s never been a single way to be happy in this universe. Some of us pretend there is. It’s a problem.

Too often, happiness is a prison. We use the idea of happiness to dictate to everyone else — and ourselves — how to live. Exhibit A: That person you always run into at just the wrong time. They find your lack of cheer disturbing. “Smile,” they tell you.

It’s not just them.

The Internet drowns us in books and articles on how to be happy. Gurus feed us factoids, like “smiling releases dopamine.” Truth is, you can’t force happiness. Fake-smiling can make you miserable, just like spiritual bypassing. The standard formula for happiness ignores anyone whose brain is wired differently. It only dumps a bunch of expectations on us, which we then punish ourselves trying to live up to. For some of us, real happiness looks strange, even unsettling to the rest of the world.

Nobody should get to tell you how to be happy. We’re all just figuring it out as we go. Anyone who pretends otherwise is either lying, or deeply confused about life — and trying to hide it.

We let happiness scripts run our lives.

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If you don’t do any of that, come up with an eloquent, socially-acceptable reason you’re opting out.

Everyone will pretend to respect it.

Once you’ve acquired all the material wealth and status you need, act like none of that matters. Define happiness as self-acceptance, or some cosmic sense of inner peace. Define it as the quality of your relationships. Make sure you tell everyone about it.

These are all examples of happiness scripts, a term sociologists use to describe the expectations placed on us by dominant cultural values. We become “happy,” when we fulfill scripted roles that maintain the status quo and contribute to the wealth and success of a tiny few. We never really question these scripts, but we should. Not all of them are meant to make you happy. They’re meant to make you think you are.

They’re meant to make you consume.

We didn’t write these scripts.

Most of us are living a version of happiness we didn’t fully choose. We didn’t create these stories. Hollywood screenwriters did. Corporations did. Politicians did. They handed them to us, and we’ve spent our entire lives trying to make them work.

In reality, they’re not meant for everyone.

They work for a small number of people. When they don’t work for us, we think it’s our fault. Maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s not your fault that you’re not happy. Maybe you’ve got a bad script.

You can change it.

We let these scripts silence us.

Happiness scripts tell us not to make too much trouble, or do things too differently from everyone else.

They celebrate diversity, but only the safe kinds.

They tell us to avoid politics and the news. Doing that will make you sad, because it reminds you how little control you have over certain aspects of your life, like access to healthcare. They tell us not to complain too much. That makes you sound negative.

So instead of actually crafting your own happiness, you pretend you’re already happy. It makes everyone else’s life easier.

Not yours, though.

Real happiness isn’t about indulging in selfish whims, but it’s not about giving into scripts either. You’re allowed to complain when something’s wrong. You’re allowed to speak up when you see something unfair. You’re allowed to make sarcastic observations.

When someone tells you not to do any of this, they’re not trying to help you. They don’t care if you’re happy.

They just want to control you.

Real happiness looks different for everyone.

Some people are happy doing the exact same thing every single day. They like eating the exact same meals. They love predictability. Their brains crave schedules and routines.

Some people don’t want sex. They’re fine being by themselves. They might prefer their own company. They don’t enjoy vacations that much. They don’t like small talk. They don’t like smiling, especially in photographs. They might enjoy things we find dull, or immoral.

Some people are better off grumpy.

Their lives might look strange to us, even empty.

You might be one of these people. You’re not sad, or miserable. You just find meaning in things outside everyone else’s happiness scripts. Maybe you’re tired of being judged.

Other people might be a little jealous of you, even if they don’t admit it. Their urge to criticize might just be an unconscious attempt to validate their own flimsy sense of happiness at your expense.

Happiness isn’t just an inside job.

We like talking about happiness like it’s an interior balance of outlooks and perspectives. It’s comforting. It lets us focus on our own goals, our own relationships, and our own story of identity.

Real happiness is more than an individual pursuit.

It’s a collective one.

Look at the happiest countries on earth, ranked by the world happiness report. There’s nationalized healthcare. Work weeks are flexible. Parents have access to affordable daycare. Nobody’s trying to escape a rat race, or make a living off telling everyone else how to live.

People care about each other.

These are cultures that put serious work into collective happiness, instead of making everyone play along with platitudes. They decided to stop selling everyone the same set of tired fantasies, and give everyone the tools to write their own happiness scripts.

Our happiness scripts are broken.

We’re obsessed with our own happiness, when we barely know what that is. Deep down, I think a lot of us aren’t that happy, because we know we’re all chasing the same generic goals.

We lie to ourselves constantly. We say things like, “money can’t buy happiness,” and yet we know how hard it is to be happy and hungry, or happy and homeless, or happy and sick.

We expect everyone, including ourselves, to act happy when we’re not. We make happiness a form of submissiveness.

There’s a way out.

You just have to stop telling yourself you’ll only be happy if you live according to some rule book you had no say in creating. You just have to be okay with not being happy all the time. You just have to stop worrying what other people will think about you if you don’t play along.

It’s okay not to be happy.

A lot of people claim to know what happiness is. They weave it into a story. In truth, they only understand their own small version. The more people they get on board with their brand, the better for them. They want to cast you as an extra in their happiness script.

Don’t let anyone boss you around with their personal definition of happiness, telling you to live according to rules that make you miserable.

Find your own version of happiness.

Fight for it. Don’t stop there. Help create a better world that gives everyone the basic tools to do the same thing. Depending on how someone defines happiness, you might be better off unhappy.