Last Updated on November 4, 2024

All Happiness is Unconditional

Tomorrow is Election Day in the United States.

Tensions are high.

Many people are worried about what might happen.

Predictions are still about 50-50 for who will win the presidency.

The only thing that’s for sure is this:

No matter what happens, about half of the country will be unhappy!

…at least if they believe their happiness depends on the outcome of the election.

A persistent illusion

At some level, we all believe that our happiness depends on getting what we want, and not getting what we don’t want.

This is an illusion, like an optical illusion.

But it is persistent.

No matter how many times we see through it, it still appears real.

Even people like me who teach emotional resilience skills fall for it!

Here is a famous optical illusion called the Müller-Lyer Illusion:

Which line is longer?

The truth is the two lines are the same length.

But when you add the “tails” pointing in or out, they suddenly appear to be different lengths.

You can trace with your finger and prove to yourself logically that the lines are the same length.

But no matter how many times you do so, it still appears like the bottom line is longer than the top line.

Every time I feel bad, some part of my brain thinks it’s because of something external to me.

Something out there “caused” me to feel bad.

That’s an illusion.

Certainly external things can have an influence on how I feel, but they don’t directly cause how I feel.

In fact, how I feel has a lot more to do with me!

Feeling good despite bad things happening

Any time in your entire life when you’ve felt good, bad things have been happening somewhere in the world.

So your happiness has always been despite external conditions.

And any time you’ve felt bad, good things have been happening somewhere in the world.

For example, there are millions of puppies in the world.

Of all the puppies, there is one that is literally the World’s Cutest Puppy.

If you were thinking about the World’s Cutest Puppy instead of the election results, you’d be smiling!

So how you feel is not determined by the external world.

I’m not saying that external reality doesn’t matter at all.

Nor that we should disengage from trying to make the world a better place and just think about cute puppies all the time.

Quite the opposite.

We absolutely can work towards a kinder, more peaceful, and more just world.

And we also don’t have to wait until the external world is exactly as we’d like it to be before we feel happy or at peace.

We can be happy now, because all happiness is unconditional anyway.

Have a great week,

 

 

 

~Duff
(they/them)