Happiness on Fire

I hold that to need nothing is divine, and the less a man needs

the nearer he does approach divinity

Socrates

Happiness. I have reoriented my life towards understanding it and what have I learned? The desire to be happy does not lead to happiness; and in this paradox lies the key.

Although some of the following concepts are also found throughout literature and philosophy, they may not be understood easily or quickly as they require some unweaving of established perspectives. Let's unweave.

Into the Mind

Happiness is a state of our mind. We seek pleasurable things because they activate this state - similar to how anger is activated when we are threatened. We don't seek pleasurable things because we truly need them, but because of how they make us feel. When we "feel" happy, it is because the mental state of happiness is activated. By "pursuing" happiness, we are essentially pursuing more frequent and lasting activation of this state.

This implies that happiness is not active all the time - hence the question, "how could I be happier?". It is not a question of intensity but a question of frequency. There are many mental states (or emotions) that deactivate it and reduce its frequency. Here are some examples of "happiness deactivators". Sadness. Pain. Anger. Frustration. Jealousy. Loneliness. Boredom. Meaninglessness. When these states become active in our minds, they deactivate happiness for an indeterminate amount of time. If a stranger steps on our shoe, happiness may deactivate for only a few short moments. If our significant other passes away, happiness may deactivate for a much longer period.

These "deactivators of happiness" share a common link that is crucial to understanding happiness. That common link is Desire. At the root of sadness, pain, anger, frustration, etc., lies the desire for something other than what currently is. If a stranger steps on our shoe, we desire they had not done so (activates frustration) or we desire to retaliate (activates anger). If our significant other passes away, we desire that they'd still be with us (activates sadness). Therefore, to achieve more frequent activation of happiness, we must reduce the activations of desire. In other words, to be happy, desire must stop. There are 2 ways for going about this: fulfill the desire or change our relationship with desire. Most of us prefer the first one. 

Fulfilling Desires

Imagine that you wake up feeling happy. It's a sunny and warm Sunday morning, and you have already handled all of your responsibilities for the weekend. You are literally free to do with this day as you wish. You are satisfied with the present moment, and the state of happiness is activated. You feel happy. While comfortably sitting barefoot on your sun-warmed porch, you notice a desire for a vanilla ice cream cone -- the present moment is not currently good enough. Leaving the comfort of a beautiful Sunday morning on the porch, you put on your shoes, grab your car keys, and make your way to the local ice cream shop. You live in a small town though, and upon reaching the ice cream shop, you notice the lights are off, the door is locked, and a small sign reads "Closed for the week, sorry for the inconvenience." There are no other ice cream shops nearby. You are not quite as happy on this sunny and warm Sunday morning as you were just moments ago.

Fulfilling desires is one method of deactivating them. But, as seen above, sometimes they are impossible to fulfill (i.e. deactivate). Moving onto deeper desires, can the desire of regaining a loved one who has passed away ever be fulfilled? Can we fulfill the desire of stopping pain or ending sadness? Fulfilling a desire is not always the ideal or available choice. Note that the above ice cream story also exemplifies how a desire deactivates happiness and activates other desires - frustration in this case.

But now what if the desire is fulfilled?

Say the ice cream shop is open and you purchase a vanilla ice cream cone. The desire for vanilla ice cream is deactivated, and happiness replaces it once again. Nice. But how long will the activation of happiness last this time around? How long before another desire replaces it? We can go on and on fulfilling (deactivating) desires as they come up throughout our lives, a process that can be likened to a hamster running on a wheel or to putting out fires. Putting out one fire never guarantees that another will not ignite however.

The greatest drawback of fulfilling desires is that, like modern computerized testing and certain video games, the process is adaptive. The better you respond, the harder the game becomes. So as we put out more and more fires, the stronger and more frequent the fires become. Benjamin Franklin relevantly stated, "if you desire many things, many things will seem few." The mind can be an endless source of flames in this sense. Why does this happen? Because brain processes, like our muscles, get stronger with practice. We develop a mindset of desire fulfillment - a mindset that we can't easily escape.

Changing our Relationship with Desire

There is another way to deactivate desire. It is unpleasant at first, very much so actually. Many of the world's greatest thinkers, philosophers, writers, humanitarians, and artists all encourage it however. It deals with changing how frequently desire is activated. In essence, it means training ourselves to desire (want) less. Training the mind to produce fewer fires. For instance, Epictetus suggested selecting the worst seat at a social gathering, such as one without shade, in order to develop an indifference to the sun and heat. Jesus himself encouraged us to forgo desire by "turning the other cheek." Buddha recommended meditation in order to quiet the voice of desire more generally. If these ideas sound radical it's because they are. In modern society, we are not used to saying "no" to the our desires. In this way, the fires rage on, further emblazoned by our repeated preoccupation with them...

...and we are paying dearly for it: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22244375 

So then happiness is... 

found in the absence of desire. Because every instance of desire indicates a dissatisfaction with the present as it currently is, the absence of desire indicates a satisfaction with the way things are. Like sitting on the porch on a warm and sunny day. The reason that the concept of happiness seems so elusive, so hard to nail down, is because we don't realize that desire has been trained into us. The brain processes giving rise to desire are so well-developed as to have become our default state. You see, we revert to desire even when we are comfortably resting in the chair of happiness. The more frequent activation of happiness is not possible with this current state of our minds. We cannot even imagine what a state without desire feels like because it is so foreign to our experience. If we'd like to more fully enjoy our life experience, we must untrain ourselves from the established mindset of desire fulfillment. Like with any training, untraining takes time and copious amounts of effort. It does not come easily, but it does, eventually.

We have unknowingly become the olympic athletes of desire. And with that dubious accolade we live on, endlessly desirous of a happier existence.