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Trying To Be Happy Is Making You Unhappy
What are we supposed to do about that?
Call it the law of unintended consequences
Like the feral rabbits destroying the landscape of Australia. Or the wild joy of clinical researchers noting that the medication designed to lower blood pressure was giving male subjects powerful and long-lasting boners.
Call it Murphy’s Law. Call it the contrapuntal perversity of the universe that at times, displays the eerie hallmarks of consciousness. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? The more we strive for something, the further away it becomes. Not because some invisible hand is yanking the string away, toying with us like kittens. No. It’s your own efforts that push your goal further away. Your thrashing that makes the boat capsize. Trying to be happy is making you unhappy.
We all want to be happy
Of course we do. It feels nice to be happy. I can speak only to the English-speaking world, and it’s in that monoglot confederation that the pursuit of happiness has been taken to its most extreme level. It’s famously enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, but more than that, it’s written on every stone step like the law scratched into the scales of a dragon.
