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#00Buck
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I had a meeting today with someone who I only knew in passing. They told me that they knew I could make more money working at other places. I said "thanks for the compliment." We circled around the topic a few times and each time they again kept telling me how much more money I could make. They told me the names of the companies and had contacts to call. Eventually when it became clear I wasn't that concerned about it we moved on to another topic. 

After the meeting I walked outside into the financial district among the giant towers. I pulled out my phone to make a call so I could report on how the meeting went. On my way through the courtyard I literally stepped over a homeless person. The fact that I literally stepped over someone's body on the street is odd. I've seen thousands of homeless people lying on the street. I've never once checked to see if anyone of them were actually alive. I'm sure that at least once in my life I must have stepped over someone who died and had simply been ignored because they were homeless. I feel sad that this is normal to me and I'm not alone. Everyone was stepping over them too. 

During my childhood my parents must have explained to me what homelessness was because it was everywhere. I grew up downtown and although we were poor we had a home. Lots of people in the area didn't. I don't think there was a single day spent outdoors when I was a kid where I didn't see a homeless person. During the meeting I was asked if I was happy. Some people equate money to happiness as if a certain amount of dollars make you happy so more must make you even happier. 

I'm not even sure anymore that some people should even try to be happy. I know that sounds like an odd statement but I'm sure you know at least one person who is never happy. Oddly some people don't seem happy unless they are unhappy. I have a theory that people have been over sold on happiness in general.

I think some people are pre-dispositioned to having one primary emotion. It could be happiness or it could be something else. I think telling them that they need to pursue an emotion that is different than the one that they are predisposed to might be wrong. That pressuring someone who prefers to feel melancholy to feel happy all the time makes them feel worse rather than better. Maybe emotion is similar to gender? I certainly wouldn't go around telling a gay person to be straight. So why force a standard of happiness on people who aren't predisposed to it?

Am I happy? Sometimes. I'd say right now I'm satisfied. I have enough. Enough of all the things I need right now. I guess the blessing is that I know what I need. 

There is a satisfaction that can come from emotions other than happiness. I have in the past been righteously angry when I've been wronged and it drove me to seek justice. I've been heartbroken after a bad break up to the point that sadness gave me incredible clarity about the meaning of song lyrics, art, and love. I've felt regret so deep that it changed the way I behaved forever. I've felt shame so intensely that it drove me back to the person I'd hurt to beg forgiveness on my hands and knees. The only emotion that I can truly say is negative is loneliness. Even then if the loneliness urges you to seek out company and make new friends it really isn't that negative after all. I've felt so lonely that I've flown across borders to seek out new friends. 

Trying to change my life to suit someone else's view on how I should be living wouldn't make me happier. I'm glad I'm wise enough to know this. When I was training at the gym last week my trainer told me "come on just two more. Get angry!" I started laughing. I get that anger is most people's go-to emotion for tough times. Mine isn't. I just laughed and said "I'm not an angry person" and finished the set. 

I guess I'm the emotional or business equivalent of the neighbour who doesn't care about mowing their lawn once a week. 

It pisses off the neighbours but it's my lawn not theirs. Sure they have to look at it but who is setting the standard? Which is more "natural" a lawn mowed once a week or tall flowing grass that waves when the wind blows? 

I don't know what would make the homeless person happy but I can bet if they had enough they'd be satisfied. 

The question is "enough of what?" Maybe they don't have the answer to that question. 

I think if everyone could answer that question the world would be a much better place. 

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Damn Buck, this is a hellova topic.

I wonder if you're onto something, but then I wonder that if people are predisposed to be unhappy...I mean, does that mean they drew a really shitty hand? I do kinda get the romanticism in being unhappy--because there IS something to it, of thinking the world is out to get you and fuck everyone you just want to eat ice cream for awhile--but I also think that's more of a middle-class white people's unhappy. It isn't homeless unhappy, or in grave danger unhappy, or shunned from your family over your gender orientation unhappy.

I've always looked at it less in terms of happy/unhappy and more in general magnitude. Some people feel REALLY HARDCORE and others stay even. My ex girlfriend was someone who felt all of the emotions all of the time, meaning she was FUCK YEAH happy or FUCK NO sad. There was little between there, and holy shit was it exhausting. I'm more of a straight in the middle, though I tend to dip towards the negative more than the positive.

Hmm. At this point I'm rambling like a mofo, but I'm not in the mood to get shit done tonight. I do think that my times of most unhappiness--or not being fulfilled with life--drove me to do more things. My first novel damn near wrote itself, and I was in a pretty shitty spot when I wrote it. My second novel was a bitch and...well, I was kinda in a shitty mindset then too. So maybe that whole, "an artist must suffer" is really just bullshit.

I guess I don't know what all else to say, but you've certainly posed an interesting question and it's one I'll spend some time thinking on.

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Clearly there is situational unhappiness. I totally agree with that. Your dog dies and you cry. That is totally normal. What I'm taking about is a pre-disposition to a certain emotion or perhaps seeking out that emotion repeatedly. This is just a theory. I'm not stating it as fact but it is just another observation I've made through the course of my life. I don't think that artists must suffer. I also don't think that people who appreciate art have to suffer to do so. But I do know that in my life I've had the greatest appreciation of art when I was in a state of suffering and it was always with such clarity of thought. It is strange how emotions other than happiness can focus your mind like a laser beam. 

Thanks for posting. I appreciate the thoughts. Since I'm still working on this idea I'm glad you added to the process. 

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I always wonder about the sad tales of how those people became homeless in the first place. I wonder where their family and friends are. Did they just abandon them? Are they all dead? What a sad existence, to have nobody to pick you back up after you've fallen so far. I'm not sure where they even get the will to live.

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17 minutes ago, root said:

I always wonder about the sad tales of how those people became homeless in the first place. I wonder where their family and friends are. Did they just abandon them? Are they all dead? What a sad existence, to have nobody to pick you back up after you've fallen so far. I'm not sure where they even get the will to live.

It is a combination of things. For someone to hit a low like that and stay there usually there are multiple factors involved. I once knew a homeless man who was a successful lawyer. In one week his mother died, his wife left him, and his business partner took all the money out of their company and ran away with it. He became depressed and mentally ill. He stopped working and paying his bills. He got evicted and ended up being a homeless person in the fancy area where he used to own a home. 

I still see him on the streets today. I don't know how but he survives. Every winter even though I'm always sure he will freeze to death he appears in spring. His name is Gary but if you call him that it reminds him of his former life and he gets enraged and yells "my name isn't Gary MY NAME IS FUCK!"

Sad stuff. As to the will to live I don't get it either. Human life can either be fragile or super tough. I've seen people die from tripping and falling down the stairs and I've seen people survive being shot in the face at point blank range with a shotgun. Why some people make it and some don't baffles me. 

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27 minutes ago, root said:

I always wonder about the sad tales of how those people became homeless in the first place. I wonder where their family and friends are. Did they just abandon them? Are they all dead? What a sad existence, to have nobody to pick you back up after you've fallen so far. I'm not sure where they even get the will to live.

When I was homeless, I left 1600 miles from home to chase my dreams. I relied on adults that said they were going to help me achieve that dream. My gramps- day of orientation- said he can't cosign any loans for me. I had no family, no friends, and a heap of mental issues that I hadn't had the therapy I needed to deal with it. After one year of struggling through school, a mental ward stay, and terrible roommate after terrible roommate, I was forced to try and find living on my own. For several weeks, I unfortunately imposed myself on accaintances. During that time, while I was thankful I had a warm bed, I slept just to avoid being awake (or alive). My mom offered limited condolences, and my dad said, "that sucks" but had his preferred wife and child to look after. 

Homelessness is easy to achieve when you don't have family or friends. 

Buck, I have a lot to say but I have mod junk to attend to, so I gotta do that before I tackle this. 

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18 minutes ago, #00Buck said:

As to the will to live I don't get it either. Human life can either be fragile or super tough. I've seen people die from tripping and falling down the stairs and I've seen people survive being shot in the face at point blank range with a shotgun. Why some people make it and some don't baffles me. 

I don't really think the will the live is a conscious or psychological state. It's more so an uncontrollable reaction to certain situations. 

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You're a lot deeper of a person than I give you credit for sometimes, Buck. I like that. The truth is, no one knows what brings another happiness but the individual.

Some years ago in my part of the world, there was this homeless person living on the street that went by the name "Blanket Man"; he was a pillar of the community of sorts. Turns out, this person was a millionaire (or fairly wealthy), but for some reason - he took it upon himself to give up all of his worldly possessions and rough it on the streets of the city.

To this day we still don't know why he chose that life, but he must've found solace in it somehow.

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40 minutes ago, Lemon said:

When I was homeless, I left 1600 miles from home to chase my dreams. I relied on adults that said they were going to help me achieve that dream. My gramps- day of orientation- said he can't cosign any loans for me. I had no family, no friends, and a heap of mental issues that I hadn't had the therapy I needed to deal with it. After one year of struggling through school, a mental ward stay, and terrible roommate after terrible roommate, I was forced to try and find living on my own. For several weeks, I unfortunately imposed myself on accaintances. During that time, while I was thankful I had a warm bed, I slept just to avoid being awake (or alive). My mom offered limited condolences, and my dad said, "that sucks" but had his preferred wife and child to look after. 

Homelessness is easy to achieve when you don't have family or friends. 

Buck, I have a lot to say but I have mod junk to attend to, so I gotta do that before I tackle this. 

Thanks for sharing. I've had a lot of close calls in life. I often see people who are far less fortunate than me and think of how I could have been in their place if something went wrong. Sleep has been my friend when times are bad. Being asleep is far easier than being awake when everything sucks.

I was never homeless but when I describe where I grew up I tell people it was like the house from Fight Cub. My room had cracked plaster walls where you could see the wood through the holes. The floors creaked and groaned and you'd snag your toes on exposed nails. The lights only worked half the time. I had buckets and pots all around to catch the water that came in through the ceiling. I used to wake up in the middle on the night because of the squirrels and raccoons that lived in the walls running up and down inside the wall where my bed was. 

The worst thing was in winter a sheet of ice would form on the ceiling inside of my room by the window and a giant icicle would form by the glass. It would be so cold that I could see my breath. I used to cry and look out my window at the grey sky and snow and wish that one day I would have a normal life. I didn't want to be rich or special. Normal was the only thing I wanted. At that time a new life seemed so far away. 

Come back to the thread when you have time. I enjoy how honestly and openly you share your experiences. It takes bravery and honesty to do that. There's a song I've been listening to in the car it goes: You're a real human being and a real hero. I feel this way about anyone who is willing to put themselves out in the open and be vulnerable in order to share and help others. 

 

27 minutes ago, AlastairSnowpaw said:

 

I don't really think the will the live is a conscious or psychological state. It's more so an uncontrollable reaction to certain situations. 

I don't know what to think. In my life including recently I've seen people who are very old literally decide to die. Some of them knew they would die from medical conditions. Others for seemingly no reason at all knew they were going to die and called their entire family around them and literally died in their arms. I've had several near death close calls. When those happened it was like I was outside of my body watching someone else go through it. I have also had my life flash before my eyes. Have the entire world go into slow motion. I'm open to believing almost anything when it comes to the mysteries of life and death. 

 

24 minutes ago, Mr. Fox said:

You're a lot deeper of a person than I give you credit for sometimes, Buck. I like that. The truth is, no one knows what brings happiness but the individual.

Some years ago in my part of the world, there was this homeless person living on the street that went by the name "Blanket Man"; he was a pillar of the community of sorts. Turns out, this person was a millionaire, but for some reason - he took it upon himself to give up all of his worldly possessions and rough it on the streets of the city.

To this day we still don't know why he chose that life, but he must've found solace in it somehow.

I'm as deep as a mud puddle. 

One man's trash is another man's treasure. 

Some men are treasured. Some men get trashed. 

I guess it's all perspective. I admit I want to show empathy towards everyone but I honestly can't understand the motivations of some people but I guess they'd say the same about me. 

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26 minutes ago, AlastairSnowpaw said:

I don't really think the will the live is a conscious or psychological state. It's more so an uncontrollable reaction to certain situations. 

Honestly, and real talk here, a lot of the time the will to live only exists because trying to kill yourself very rarely is guaranteed an outcome, and is more hassle than to just live. 

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Deep topic. 

My own relationship with happiness is a little hard for me to describe. 

I don't think happy is a simple emotion, its what happens when you feel relief, exuberance, contentment, serenity, excitement, triumph to me it's basically an umbrella term for the state of being where you feel the most "alive" or "awake" for lack of a better word. My life has had some genuine bumps but somehow I manage to be optimistic and hopeful. As a child in a dysfunctional family that moved around a lot I didn't have a whole lot of friends and sometimes my living conditions were kind of shitty. I think the worst was a beat up little mill house that belonged to my American grandparents where I spent about a year sharing a tiny bedroom with my mom and brother. In spite of living my life surrounded by people I always felt really isolated, even as a child so I tended to daydream a lot. I would fill my mind with pictures in my head of characters and places and I would spend hours drawing them. I suppose that did make me happy, the things I created for myself sometimes seemed more real than the abusive, negligent people in my life. My family eventually moved into an actual house of our own and I made friends for the first time. Things seemed to be improving for me and life began to open up with possibility. I met my first boyfriend at 16 and he turned out to be another abusive, manipulative asshole like the people in my family. At the end of our relationship he sexually assaulted me and this caused me to fall apart. The fall out from that incident was so traumatic that I felt like my very personality was fragmented. I lost large chunks of time, I started drinking heavily, my anxiety went through the roof, I couldn't pin down my own gender/sexuality for the longest time (I'm still not sure some days who or what I am) and I started to dissociate from my surroundings. Worse than all that, the emotional chaos eventually gave way to being completely numb to everything, I retreated into my own head and threw myself back into making art, writing thing and just generally trying to shut everything out. I think I scared poor Gator a few times with my hermit like behavior. Eventually I sobered up, I got better and a while ago I started talking to an honest to goodness councilor. 

I guess I can say that I would describe myself as overall happy now. I'm starting to really move on from all my inner demons and over the past couple of years I've come out of my shell a little more. I can listen to music or look at art and find it touching or cathartic. I laugh, I cry, I get angry and those are good feelings, they are purging feelings and even though I didn't realize it I do need them. I did attempt suicide once but it didn't work, and now I'm actually glad of that because I feel like I do have some hope for myself.

I can agree with the idea that the only truly negative emotion is loneliness. Nothing impeded my recovery like isolation did, in some cases it was self-imposed. Sometimes I still just don't have the will to come out and talk to people. Being empty, being numb, being alone, those things hurt not because they actually make you feel some kind of pain but because they suck away your ability to feel anything, at worst I don't even feel real anymore because there's a big gaping nothing and even my characters, stories and sense of self have left me. 

In a nutshell, I understand perfectly why The Nothing in The Neverending Story is so terrifying. 

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One of my friend's mother made her family be homeless growing up. I think in the end it was to teach that happiness is not found in material things like a house. I think that has interesting implications for what happiness is and isn't.

I grew up in a moderately wealthy family and had a stable childhood. As I grew up, I slowly recognized that everything I was buying wasn't making me happy. Of course, I think happiness is just a matter of perspective and can only be judged on an individual basis. I'm not sure if people are pre-exposed to happiness, but I think perhaps it depends on the environment that the person is in. 

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37 minutes ago, Red Lion said:

Deep topic. 

My own relationship with happiness is a little hard for me to describe. 

In a nutshell, I understand perfectly why The Nothing in The Neverending Story is so terrifying. 

Thanks of sharing. Sexual abuse is a real big one in terms of messing people up especially when it happens at a younger age. 

A PHD in Psychiatry once told me the reason why children always blame themselves for sexual abuse. He says it has to do with the mind of a child and their world view. Kids are raised to believe that adults, teachers, parents, friends, and relatives are good people. Kids don't have the cognitive ability to see the subtleties of human behaviour.

When a child is abused they have to very quickly make a mental and emotional decision. They can choose to believe that adults can be horrible and abusive and they can never again trust an adult ever again. Or...

They can believe that the world is a good place and adults are good and can be trusted and the bad thing happened because of something they did to cause it. As a child adults tower over you. You live in a land of giants who control everything including when you eat and when you sleep. If you do something wrong they can overpower you and make you feel pain whenever they want. Kids are powerless and weak compared to adults. 

To live in a world where you have to fear all adults is unthinkable for a child. So kids blame themselves. I'm sorry to hear that you were abused. I'm glad you are healing. Ironically one of the best parents I ever met was horribly abused as a child. He went above and beyond to give his son the life he could never have for himself. I think that's taking a hardship and using it to create a gift. 

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Joy is just an illusion worn by other emotions like a mask. As temporary as its metaphor.

Happiness is not the goal, it is the reaction to meeting the goal. People can be happy with everything, anything or nothing. There is no standard, no universal endgame and no purpose beyond what we create.

6 hours ago, #00Buck said:

I guess it's all perspective. I admit I want to show empathy towards everyone but I honestly can't understand the motivations of some people but I guess they'd say the same about me.

There will be plenty who don't deserve your empathy, your respect nor your friendship. Nobody can please everybody, and it would be destructive beyond measuring to try.

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i think for me, happiness has only ever come in the form of moments; it's never been a state of being.  but i have trouble telling whether that's because i'm just "one of those people" or because i was made to be that way, or because i have things blocking me from feeling happy that could someday be removed. 

as a kid, i was happy when i was playing or going fishing or something, but not satisfied with the overall picture.  i was lonely, confused, and afraid.  and that has not changed.  even the reasons for it have been largely the same all the way into my adult years, up to the present.  i am inadequate.  other people do not like or respect me (and why should they?).  the reason i don't have friends is because there's something wrong with me.  i am nothing and i will never be anything.  i don't fit in.  i'm not worth listening to.  i'm wrong, and everything i do is wrong.  those are things that have been drilled into me for as long as i can remember, both very subtly and very directly, by parents, grandparents, teachers, and peers.  most importantly, i guess, is that it came from the people who raised me. 

i have legitimate problems in my life that aren't necessarily related to the insecurities and lack of self-worth that i was instilled with, though.  through a long series of issues and events i won't discuss here, i have ended up in a position where i am an adult with very minimal job experience, working part-time, with no car or license, living with a family member.  i have some physical problems that can't properly be dealt with at the moment due to lack of funds/resources.  i have goals laid out, but the dream of achieving them seems further and further away. 

if i did get these things done/fixed, though, would i finally be able to be happy?  i have no idea, because i've never really known what it's like to be satisfied with my life.  i have no way of telling which came first.  others take for granted that i am just one of those fundamentally unhappy people who is "pleasantly depressing" on a good day and generally more of an unemotional robot than anything.  i feel like there is more to me, but i can't access it.  things have been going wrong in one way or another for so long, and just sort of constantly piling up on me, that i usually cycle between being angry and being numb these days. 

i'm not homeless at the moment, but there are a lot of things i know i'm lacking.  some of them are more tangible than others, but most of them i know for sure are obtainable with the right amount of patience, work, and maybe luck.  i guess i won't know whether i'm capable of being happy until i at least reach a point at which i can be satisfied.  that would mean fixing the huge obstacles that are currently in my way, and hopefully gaining the one and only thing i've ever really wanted and never really had: personhood.

 

please excuse the ramble; i should have been in bed an hour ago.. but maybe at least some of this is relevant to the discussion.  may regret posting in the morning

 

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Haha, okay here's one I'd be good at. As you say, people are homeless for a lot of reasons. If someone is passed out on the road, which I have seen plenty of times, chances are they are drunk or on something else and passed out. It's usually possible to just look at them to see if they are breathing. The lawyer who called himself "FUCK" well, I have to admit I laughed when I saw that. Is it sad? I guess it's sad that someone was that caught up in themselves they could become that mentally deranged when their situation changed.

I've already stated the reasons I'm on the streets right now and it's not something new to me. I'm also staying at one of the camps in the city notorious for housing escaped felons (one person I met had chopped apart his wife, another was on death row twice) since you don't have to show ID or anything to stay there, just write your "name" down (apparently someone's name is Texas, yeah okay). A lot of people there are actually quite normal. After many threats the first week (long story, I have a loud mouth) I ended up becoming friends with most people there.

I can try to classify people, off the top of my head. You have people who don't care about being homeless and know they can get by just fine with little to no money, especially in my situation where I don't have kids or anyone I'm responsible for. You have a very large number of people who just got out of jail or prison. You have almost as significant an amount of people with drug and alcohol problems and then you have people with mental problems which can be for any number of reasons. I could go into details about people without mentioning any names (as if I know real names in the first place, hah) but that doesn't seem very relevant here.

The thread is about happiness, and this is a funny topic because I can tell you right now most people don't know what it is they even want in the first place. Life is funny like that. Happiness is a relative state, and people look at their situation and compare it to other times in their lives and are either relatively happy, sad or just content. No, money won't get you happiness. Money will get you a superficial life with a bunch of friends who use you, a wife who doesn't love you as a person and will make you go nuts calling yourself FUCK when you lose all of it and have to live with people who already figured this out, probably a long time ago.

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1 hour ago, Endless/Nameless said:

I'd love to be a hobo. 

On the up side, you don't have to work. On the down side, your options are quite limited. The biggest reason it seems most people work day labor and stuff is either to get cigarettes, drugs and alcohol, or to try and impress girls. I'm in sort of a unique position where I don't need money for any of that. Tricks of the trade ^.~

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Damn, this is quite deep, and Im afraid its a topic I cant quite understand

I always considered the pursuit of happiness, of rest, relaxation, comfort, success...all those things, to be the prime of our lives. 

So not being happy? Not something I get. But then again, Im generally pretty happy and content, with pitfalls in between. I get there's a lot of people out there who simply cant be, for a reason or another. And I guess you guys can just...do you. Take away what you can.

 

In any case its best not to focus too directly on emotions and just, Experience things head on. Dont overthink things and just embrace them.

 

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Strongbob said:

I wanna go home

Take off this uniform and leave the show

But I'm sitting in this cell because I have to know

Have I been guilty all this time?

All alone, or in twos,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.


Some hand in hand,
And some gathered together in bands;
The bleeding hearts and artists 
Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all,
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

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3 minutes ago, Endless/Nameless said:

All alone, or in twos,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.


Some hand in hand,
And some gathered together in bands;
The bleeding hearts and artists 
Make their stand.

And when they've given you their all,
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall.

It's interesting how when you get far enough into a deep discussion about life, love, and happiness the conversation inevitably turns to poetry.  It's as if these ideas transcend simple words and explanations.  I'm not sure if poetry provides any better answers, but it does make you realize that you are not the first person to feel that way, and we can take universal comfort in that.  You are not alone.  

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1 minute ago, Strongbob said:

It's interesting how when you get far enough into a deep discussion about life, love, and happiness the conversation inevitably turns to poetry.  It's as if these ideas transcend simple words and explanations.  

Yeah, there's something in music/poetry that's more than the sum of it's parts. 

3 minutes ago, Strongbob said:

I'm not sure if poetry provides any better answers, but it does make you realize that you are not the first person to feel that way, and we can take universal comfort in that.  You are not alone.  

Exactly. It's theorized that that's why you can feel better after listening to a depressing song, or how some people can find heavy metal soothing; it's an emphatic thing, and hearing others explore similar feelings can affirm that the way you're feeling isn't irrelevant. A way of sharing emotion. 

Which kinda brings me back to the music rant I wrote earlier in the "Things That You Hate" thread... If your music is always just telling you to feel good all the time, well....how's that supposed to work??

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2 minutes ago, Endless/Nameless said:

Which kinda brings me back to the music rant I wrote earlier in the "Things That You Hate" thread... If your music is always just telling you to feel good all the time, well....how's that supposed to work??

Because if you don't feel good all the time there is something clearly wrong with you and you should be medicated, or go buy stuff, or eat a lot of sugar, then you can be happy all the time!  It will just cost you your soul.     

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I thought this thread was gonna contain some sort of "I'm telling you off for this and this" shenanigans. Instead, it's yet another deep thinking thread by Buck.

I've pondered this topic a lot. Childhood was very tough for me and that leaked over into adult years until very recently. I've been to some very dark places in my mind. Only in the last year have things started to perk up quite a bit, but I wouldn't say I'm happy. I wouldn't even say I'm content, I'd just say I'm only slightly unhappy. My goal has always been "happy", but maybe that's wrong? Maybe I should just aim for "content"?

My major worry is that any time something really good happens in my life, something really bad happens to even it out and send me back to unhappy mode. So, I've always kinda been afraid of being happy. I don't think I'm destined to ever be happy to be totally honest, I think my best bet is to aim for content. What does that entail, though? I always thought it meant finding a mate or at the very least a best friend because currently I have neither. I think the latter is a given, everyone should have a best friend, but I don't know if I need a mate. I really want one, and truth be told I always hoped that my mate would be my best friend. That's how it should be, really. How else are you going to stand being with this person for the rest of your life, living and sharing space/everything else with them, and more easily work through every struggle that will come up? Biggest issue there is I can't emotionally handle a typical relationship or the typical ways of finding someone. I pretty much have to hope they fall into my lap and that I'm not too scared to do anything about it when I get them. This is assuming life works out for me for once, but history says I'm fucked.

Sooooo... summary, I'm pretty much fucked because any time good comes, bad comes and wipes it away. The theory of "some people aren't meant to be happy" isn't too farfetched honestly.

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22 hours ago, Kinare said:

I thought this thread was gonna contain some sort of "I'm telling you off for this and this" shenanigans. Instead, it's yet another deep thinking thread by Buck.

I've pondered this topic a lot. Childhood was very tough for me and that leaked over into adult years until very recently. I've been to some very dark places in my mind. Only in the last year have things started to perk up quite a bit, but I wouldn't say I'm happy. I wouldn't even say I'm content, I'd just say I'm only slightly unhappy. My goal has always been "happy", but maybe that's wrong? Maybe I should just aim for "content"?

My major worry is that any time something really good happens in my life, something really bad happens to even it out and send me back to unhappy mode. So, I've always kinda been afraid of being happy. I don't think I'm destined to ever be happy to be totally honest, I think my best bet is to aim for content. What does that entail, though? I always thought it meant finding a mate or at the very least a best friend because currently I have neither. I think the latter is a given, everyone should have a best friend, but I don't know if I need a mate. I really want one, and truth be told I always hoped that my mate would be my best friend. That's how it should be, really. How else are you going to stand being with this person for the rest of your life, living and sharing space/everything else with them, and more easily work through every struggle that will come up? Biggest issue there is I can't emotionally handle a typical relationship or the typical ways of finding someone. I pretty much have to hope they fall into my lap and that I'm not too scared to do anything about it when I get them. This is assuming life works out for me for once, but history says I'm fucked.

Sooooo... summary, I'm pretty much fucked because any time good comes, bad comes and wipes it away. The theory of "some people aren't meant to be happy" isn't too farfetched honestly.

I totally feel exactly where you're coming from. Lately I'm not happy but content. Happiness is something you really can't go back from. Once you've experienced true happiness you'll be comparing all your experiences to it for the rest of your life. Someone once asked me why rich people kill themselves when the stock market crashes. The reason is they don't want to go back to being poor. Going back is the most painful thing possible. If you ever want to be haunted by a thought go out and have a perfect day. 

I had a perfect day once. It was literally perfect. It was on a weekend and I drove to another city to visit a girl I was in love with. A stunningly beautiful girl. We sat in the backyard in the sun. The flowers were in bloom, the sky was blue, the weather was perfect, the drinks tasted great, and I was in love. It was like I was being hugged by the world. I had no worries and everything was perfect. That day still pops into my head about once a week. That was probably 15 years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday and the sad thing is I have not had a single day since that one that felt as good. 

So yeah I totally get what you mean. Still I'm so glad I had that day. It is the only perfect thing I've ever had in my life. 

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Happiness is just a feeling, one that's temporary, as are all the other feelings. You cannot live through life feeling eternal grief, anger, or even happiness. Even so, money is not a way to happiness. Look at me, I've bought just about every single video game machine in existence, about six iPods, two iPhones, and a couple of TVs. I'm still not happy.

 

The reason? I could maybe blame it others, say that no one loves me. Or I could say that I haven't bought enough, that every single little thing I've bought so far is just chicken feed. But I'm not going to say either.

 

Instead, I'm going to say I should be happy with what I have, instead of what others have. I should be thankful that I still have my house, my loved ones, and my possessions. True happiness is what comes from the heart. And that is why anyone, in any setting, can be truly happy.

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