It’s impossible to duplicate happiness.
If you’re ever in a period in your life, whether it’s in a country, with someone, in a job that brings you a lot of happiness and there is a break where you are absent from it, you simply cannot go back and re-live the same level of happiness that you experienced the first time.
It’s hard for many people to accept that, especially if there are places or people that made them happy in the past that no longer bring that same level of enjoyment to them at present, whether it’s due to things changing on their part or other external factors.
Is there really a remedy to it? All that can be said is that if there is something, some place or someone that makes you happy than stick with it until it doesn’t anymore. At least know that whatever happiness you got out of it has passed before you move on.
Happiness almost works as a drug, you have peaks (Highs), you have troughs (Lows), but you have that baseline, that baseline is what regulates you, you seek peaks but they don’t last forever, you have troughs and you seek to come back to your baseline, then at your baseline you’re seeking that next high (Withdrawl symptoms?), but it won’t ever last forever. The honeymoon only lasts for ever so long before you mundanely drift back to your baseline.
So does your baseline change? With a new environment? Changes to your financial position? Your environment doesn’t change your inherent disposition. It provides little increases to your pleasure level, but it always falls back to where it was at the start. Altering your belief system can certainly affect the regulator of your temperament, but only by a slight extent. So does money change this? Even money can’t change the basic emotions and insecurities we all feel, either from not having enough or not feeling fulfilled. It means the human experience is the same for everyone. It’s better to have money than not, but it doesn’t solve everything
If you’re ever in a place in your life where everything is going right, you’re at ease with yourself; you would be a sucker to let it go. Know that.
Inside The University of Melbourne 
That’s a great post. It was deep. Great perspective.
Does sadness work similarly? It’s had for me to even contemplate being so sad and having the emotional brain space to be analysing it throughout that timeframe.
how can we ever be happy for the logn run, is it just us trying to convince ourselves that we are? I always wondered how accurate people were when they described their lives as perfect for the last x amount of years etc.
No good thing ever lasts, we’re always working towards the next good thing.
When you first started this blog, I used to think you were some immature kid filled with hate, but with the latest flurry of posts I start to see that you’re pretty well rounded and filled with lots of wisdom and knowledge that is pretty deep and insightful.
Is it possible to pinpoint what was it in that experience which made you happy? Was it when you first experienced a new country, fell in love or was in a job which fulfilled you? “First” experiences can’t be recreated or re-lived.
1 point that I want to make is that you need to work for happiness.
I don’t think happiness will just fall on your laps if you did nothing that will lead to that. Example, if experiencing new places makes you happy, then go explore new places. If you have a good relationship with someone and that someone makes you happy, make sure you do your part to grow and nourish that relationship. If you don’t like your job anymore because your job scope/interest changed, then ask your superior if you can move into another department or find a job which you like. Instead of lamenting how things changed, adapt to the changes to keep your happiness. After all, the only constant in life is change.
As for places, I don’t think it can hold happiness like a jar. You might feel a sense of nostalgia whenever you return but without the people who were there when you were happy, it’s just another place with strangers.
To simplify things, the key to happiness is fulfilling Maeslow’s hierarchy of needs. Money is just a part of that equation (under employment/resources/property) so people who makes Money their master can’t be completely happy.
What do you think?
Yeah but don’t you get the diminishing levels of happiness once you do something again? It’s just not the same. eg. You like travelling, but then you travel for 2 years and the feeling of travelling to new places and experiencing new things starts to fade away. It’s not the same as when you first started.
deep stuff
We are all sad lambs, life is shit
I need to speak to sombodeeeeeeee
amazing.
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