Random thoughts about existence

[mousme]

Contrary to what the title may lead you to believe, this is going to be a short post, in bullet-point form. These are thoughts that are rattling around in my head, and I want to put some of them down before I forget.

1- Have you noticed how we're in a society that teaches us we ought to be dissatisfied with our lives, no matter what? "Success" stories are all about individuals (individuals, mind you, not communities or groups or anything) who realize that their lives are empty and meaningless, and they go on to make a huge difference in the world. You can't start out by being okay with who and where you are, you *have* to change first before it counts.

2- Success must originate in suffering. I wonder why that is? If we don't suffer, does that make our success less successful? Or maybe it just means it's not the right kind of success and we have to realize how empty and meaningless our lives are before we achieve "real" success.

3- a)What is it about the sudden need for people to publicize illness, especially chronic conditions? (N.B. For the love of God, don't take this personally if you're on my flist and have a chronic illness. Shockingly, this post is not about you.) Does constantly being in pain/discomfort somehow make all their accomplishments more noteworthy? Or, conversely, make everyone else's accomplishments mean nothing because they didn't accomplish it while having no arms or legs and suffering from a crippling neural disorder?
b) The flip side being that if you don't accomplish anything noteworthy (by some weird outside standard), it's only okay if you have some sort of crippling condition or another. As though the only thing that makes your life important is if you become one of those "inspirational" people they make movies about.

4- If so many books have *the* answer to being a balanced and happy person, then why are there so many damned books on the subject at all? A cynical person might wonder if it wasn't all about the money rather than happiness...

5- Have you noticed how, even though we're supposed to strive for happiness, we're not really supposed to talk about it if we have it? Other people are *suffering* after all, and it would be rude to shove it in their faces. Unless, of course, you have a multi-million dollar book deal on how you got to be happy.

Okay, this post turned cranky very quickly, and I have to go to work.

Comments

[luvenditti.livejournal.com]

aaaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha


HEAR HEAR!!!

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Cranky Cat is cranky today, apparently. ;)

[heartofawarrior.livejournal.com]

I've been having similar thoughts lately - heaven forbid a person should be content!

And there's the constant one-upsmanship that goes on among the "suffering" people - don't talk about your problems because, after all, there's someone out there who has it worse off than you! Even if you're not actually complaining, it will be taken as if you are, and you'll offend someone! *eyeroll*

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the subtle one-upmanship is really annoying to read, especially because it's almost always disguised in a not-so-subtle way as sympathy/commiseration, when in reality it's a bid for head-pats.

"Oh, poor you for having your basement flooded. I totally know how you feel, because last year Hurricane Beelzebub uprooted my entire house and flung it into the ocean, while I was in the hospital suffering from ebola and my partner broke both his legs while we had no insurance. Oh, and my dog died or a rare tropical disease brought in by the hurricane."

[heartofawarrior.livejournal.com]

Exactly! That's part of what drives me nuts when Clint asks what's going on, and I tell him "here, this is what's happening, and it kind of sucks/it's making me upset" - he always tries to remind me that "it could be worse", and points out whatever he's dealing with (which, honestly, usually IS worse, because he's in the Sandbox right now)...it's like "wow, way to make me feel guilty for being upset over this!" I love him to bits, and I know he's trying to make me see the bright side of things, but his methods leave a lot to be desired ;-)

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, sounds like it.

*pats*

At least he means well, rather than it being a bald bid for extra sympathy. :)

[heartofawarrior.livejournal.com]

*purrs*

I keep telling him he's lucky he's cute - it's how he's survived this long. Nature makes boys, babies and animals cute so we don't kill and eat them when they frustrate us :-P

[tcaptain.livejournal.com]

1 - I've always felt that marketting and such has become so pervasive in our society that it MUST cultivate this feeling that we MUST all be dissatisfied, after all, a satisfied person does not consume as much and therefore money is not made. This tends to be combined with material things (or lack thereof) at the center of this dissatifaction, which in turn distracts us from the larger issues of society...

2 - I don't know that success MUST come from suffering...I think this is just because, again, as a society, we've come to equate suffering with hard work. I don't know what success can be achieved without hard work and hard work CAN be painful maybe...I guess it depends on your definition of success. If success means achieving a goal, or a proficiency, then work is involved...if success is defined as a realization of an idea or a spiritual truth, then it might be possible this is achieved without any suffering at all.

3a - We have this trend of wanting people to look and say "Awww it's ok" and give us a (sometimes metaphorical) hug. We have been trained to crave attention. It's a mild form of munchausen syndrome I think. We are all guilty of it one way or another. We want people to rally around us.
3b - I don't know that it's ok one way or another...I guess I haven't run into this.

4 - It's about money. We (as a society, I don't speak for any individual) have been programmed to want the "quick and easy fix" to complex problem. Many MANY individuals (and most are dishonest, the rest are deluded IMO) step up and get amazingly rich by offering us exactly what we want. What would most people rather hear? "The only way to be fit and healthy is to eat well, in reasonable portions and exercise and put in some effort to stay that way." or "If you give me 20 bucks...I can tell you the SEKRETZ *THEY* (It's always a THEY) DO NOT WANT YOU TO KNOW!!! and you can get fit while eating twinkies and doing only fun and easy things!!" . I can tell you most people will disconnect their minds and say "Well I have an OPEN mind and it's ONLY 20 bucks...so what the hell?", when more critical thinkers speak up, we are told we are closed minded (I run into this with my family...).

5 - This one boggles, but maybe it's just a courtesy...why make someone else more miserable? I don't, however, think this is an absolute as I love to hear when my friends are happy...however, when my ex left me, I really didn't want to hear an extended dissertation on why my friend's marriage was perfect. Now I do, but not then.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Mostly, I'm just venting. There's a long and interesting blog post to be made about all of these, but I'm just in a bitchy mood. None of this is news to me, it just bugs the hell out of me.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Incidentally, I really like the idea of a collective Munchausen Syndrome. Awesome. :D

I Can't Say I Agree

[vureoelt.livejournal.com]

1 - I've heard it said that it is a fundamental biological instinct to strive for more. It's how a species improves.

2 - I don't think it does, but the contrast makes it stick out more in your mind compared to others.

3 - a) I don't think that's always the case. The British "stiff upper lip" mentality clearly goes against this line of thinking. More, I think it's the media influencing people to think it's the norm and the media thrives more on bad news than good.

4 - I imagine it's because the answer (isn't the same or doesn't work) for every person. Religion comes in lots of flavours...

5 - Nope, but I tend towards the blunt and literal.

[curtana.livejournal.com]

Have you noticed how we're in a society that teaches us we ought to be dissatisfied with our lives, no matter what?

Yep! A novel I was reading recently had a character who expressed it along the lines of (paraphrasing) "Up until recently, discontent was a social problem. Now contentment is." His theory, as I recall it, was that the masses used to be kept off-balance and nonthreatening because their lives were too hard to worry about much beyond survival - but if they got REALLY discontented, their government/ruler/church would try to placate them. Once that wasn't true any longer, the next best way to keep people off-balance and non-threatening to TPTB became to make them constantly want more, and tell them they can earn it if they just try hard enough. Yay capitalism.

[mousme.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a really neat book. What's the title? ('Cause what I really need is another book to add to my reading list...)

[curtana.livejournal.com]

It was "The Likeness", by Tana French. I strongly recommend reading the first one she wrote, "In The Woods" before picking it up, though. It's not precisely a sequel, they can both stand alone, but certain things will make a bit more sense if you read both, plus I just generally liked it ;) They're detective novels set in Ireland, but I find them a bit more meaty on the thinky front than some mysteries, and they don't give nice pat solutions either.

[wererogue.livejournal.com]

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/dan_gilbert_researches_happiness.html

1. I think that "success" is something that happens when we achieve a goal. Therefore, you can't succeed without *doing something*, so on one level it's just semantics. In terms of how we're encouraged to act, society wants us to contribute, and contributions drive society. It's a cyclic dependency, and it pushes us forward collectively. However, from an individual point of view, there's a strong argument to be made that if you can ignore this, and just be happy with what you have without contributing, you've beaten the system :P

2. In the media? I think that people are more impressed with more difficult achievements, which pretty much makes sense. If it's harder to do something, it's more impressive. This also applies to 3. If people know it was harder for you, they're more impressed. If they think you *want* that attention, though, they also think you don't deserve it. Things are more impressive when done for no reward, which I guess is another way of getting people to contribute to society.

4. Definitely a good point. There are so many because people want an answer enough to pay for it, people are happy to sell them *their* answer, and most people's answers are different.

5. It's also related to the attention thing. If you want attention, you don't deserve it. It's reinforced by religion (humility), too, again as a way to get people to work hard without providing a lot of reward.

Not that I think all of that is the ideal way that people should behave - I just think it's how they *do*.

[gats.livejournal.com]

4. Actually, from my experience with self help books (which isn't that huge), the answer boils down to: live in the moment, not the past or the future; set goals; and take action. The really short version being 'don't worry, be happy.'

[urban-homestead.livejournal.com]

Speaking purely for myself: happiness certainly does eliminate my desire to go off and become an inspirational success story. I'm too busy having a good time.

[thinkingoutlaw.livejournal.com]

Being a cantankerous rabble rouser, it is my conjecture that the media and powers-that-be get a lot of mileage out of convincing us that we are hurting. The gov't will come along and fix it, so long as you elect the right person or give up just this teeny weeny little civil liberty. Media is basically a giant infomercial. Happy people by less stuff, much like tcaptain pointed out. Unhappy people are continuously looking for the right thing to buy to solve the problem, rather than changing their idea of contentment. Further, I find that media spends a gross amount of time convincing its addicts...er, audience that they don't have enough time to manage their lives, but if they were to buy the right product, it would save them tons of time and they could use that free time to...ta,da! watch more television.

Great book about commercialism and contentment is "Your Money or Your Life" (why won't this let me italicize or underline? I may go into English teacher melt down by having incorrect punctuation) by Joe Dominguez. It will rock your wallet and more importantly, your spending and shopping paradigm.

[karine.livejournal.com]

(code to italicise: < i > text < /i > without the spaces. HTML works here.)

[thinkingoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I actually have the opposite problem of what you are talking about. When Mieszko and I have a rough time and have accepted it, we spend a lot of time consoling other people.

Us: "Our house burned down, but everyone's all right. We were fortunate. It's just stuff."

Melodramatic coworker or aquaintance: "Oh, but still how awful." And then a launch to convince us that it was worse than we thought.

This year with losing the baby, same freaking thing. It's annoying. :-P We're the ones who lost the baby; mere fringe acquaintances do not get to mourn. No, seriously.

It's like they don't want you to be content or accept that bad things happen.

Like I said, "You can grab life or let life grab you. Either way, you're going down, but with the former you get to decide who's on top."

I think a lot of people have a near victim mentality, and, worse yet, I think they like it that way.

[karine.livejournal.com]

For some people, it may be that they think you're not allowing yourself to grieve or you're putting on a strong front but it's okay to let yourself go because they're there for you. Some people do love teh dramaz.

I think you have a wonderful philosophy on life.

[kiwano.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I still haven't gotten over my gripe that so many people seem to almost brag about how busy they are. I'm still pretty sure that it has more to to with preemptively excusing oneself from unwanted social interactions while maintaining some sort of sense of virtuous work ethic about the whole deal. Still, it ends up striking me as a failure to schedule any leisure, or even a margin of error into one's life, and failures simply are not to be bragged about. :P

[karine.livejournal.com]

Success is touted like it's this epiphany, when really, it's the accomplishment of a goal. It's all on each individual to establish that goal, and it's really their fault if they make that goal unattainable, be it through personal choice or through "media influence".

I've made it a choice to count my blessings on a regular basis. Constant dissatisfaction with life leads to depression, and also to ignore what good you DO have. Success is this grand ideal that few people can live up to, and even if you do succeed, you don't allow yourself to feel like you did. I agree that it often feels like you're not "allowed" to tell people about your success (even your own version of it).

I like my life. I am not completely satisfied with my life (if I were, things would be boring) and there are always some things I strive for, but at the same time, there are several things that make me at the very least content.

What I've had to deal with is some people, in front of my contentment, saying that I'm okay with settling that way. They don't understand that being happy doesn't mean that I'll be stagnating. Life doesn't have to be a constant quest for happiness: sometimes, happiness is already there and should be recognised and enjoyed.

"Don't worry, be happy" was already quoted here, and I wish more people lived by those words.