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April 21, 2006
Thoughts : The beginning of happiness
All the time I hear people making statements like "I'd be happy if only she would...", or "I'd be happy if only he wouldn’t...", or "If my employer would only...", or "If the government would only..." Of course, few of these people end up achieving the happiness they seek – the world never quite gets around to changing in the ways they want. Which leads me to the point of this essay – my observation is that the road to happiness starts the day a person begins to assume that no one else is ever going to change in ways they want.
Note, I am not saying that people don't change. We are all in the process of transformation from who we were to who we will become; but those occasions when we change in ways that meet someone else's desires are unpredictable. It happens; but betting your happiness on it is a long shot that is far more likely to leave you frustrated.
Nor am I saying that we should not communicate to others how we would like them to change. Whatever the odds are of them changing, at least for those who care about us those odds can be improved by better communication. However, asking someone to do something is very different from assuming they will do it, and my admonition is to plan your life as if they won't.
So what does that leave?
As soon as you discard the hope that other people will change to make you happy, what is left is the question of what can you do to be happy given that everyone else will stay the same (or at least will not change in the ways you want). For those who really "get it", this can be a very liberating realization because it means that we are ultimately responsible for our own happiness.
A very simplistic application of this idea says that if you are in a relationship where you will never be happy unless the other person changes, then perhaps it is time to get out of that relationship and find a new one. There is no doubt in my mind that there are occasions where this is exactly the correct response. However, real life is often more complicated than that. You can in fact view ending one relationship and starting a new one as the ultimate form of getting your partner to change how they behave - by replacing them with someone else with different behaviors. But this has all the same problems as trying to change your old partner – a person's ability to find and attract a partner whose behavior is exactly what you want is as uncertain as trying to change someone. If your happiness depends on that, it is at great risk.
Put another way, replacing your partner only works if the new partner does in fact provide a context in which you can be happy; but what if they don't? What if in fact there is no one you can change your partner to be with whom you can be happy? What if the issue is not with your partner, but with your expectations of them? This principle does not just apply to personal relationships; but to all aspects of life that affect our happiness. Changing jobs, churches, friend, homes, cars, even what lane you are driving in can only make you happier if there exists real-world situations with which you can be happy.
Which bring me to the second step to being happy. While we cannot rely on other people changing to please us, we can in fact work to change ourselves. We should all then be diligent in our self-improvement to strive towards the goal of maximizing the volume and variety of situations within which we can be happy.
The key then is to look closely at why we are unhappy in various situations. It is easy to look at a situation and say, "I'm unhappy because they are being rude"; but why does their rudeness affect our happiness? What real harm is the tone of their voice and their choice of words doing? "But they are putting me down!" Yes, but what does it matter what they say about you? Or even what they think of you? What value do you place on their opinions? If your happiness depends on someone else changing their opinion of you, then you are back at step one.
The reality is that we all carry with us a lifetime’s worth of personal "baggage" and most of our unhappiness comes from when other people trip over our baggage, not from real harm to our person. Children may chant, "sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me"; but most people are in fact sufficiently insecure in their own identity that words do in fact hurt. When we understand better who we are and are secure in that identity, then the ability for situations and other people to make us unhappy is reduced.
Having done that, what remains are situations that are truly harmful to us, or where we allow ourselves to be vulnerable to someone who is not disserving of our trust. In both cases, finding alternatives is much easier than finding situations where our copious baggage will not get in the way. Once you have dealt with your baggage and are still unhappy, that is the time to consider changing your environment.
Now I am not saying that someone who does these two steps will be happy. Happiness is far more complicated than that. I only claim that these steps are the beginning of happiness – that they are necessary to the process, not sufficient to complete it.
Posted by Steven at April 21, 2006 09:38 PM
