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Originally Posted by josie
Being new to this forum, I'm not sure what the protocol is, so if I step on some toes here, please forgive me, but what you said Ratbastid brought up some questions in my mind. Especially this:
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Welcome! And, no, discussion is what this is all about. I don't post my ideas (well.. in Tilted Philosophy, anyway) to validate the perfection of them, but to have them interacted with and challenged.
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Originally Posted by josie
I see what you're saying, as in you'd not be totally in the moment (maybe), but worrying about when and if it might end, but then that would mean that happiness would be either fairly constant or not exist at all for certain people. It seems like you see it as a state of being that cannot be affected by outside forces. I think I'm a fairly happy person, but situations definitely come and go that affect my happiness. It's not at all constant.
*The other thing I realized is that the three specific things I listed that make me happy are also the very same things that can make me unhappy depending on the moment in time and the specific person, music or activity.
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It's also this: nothing can EVER "make you" happy. You're happy or you're not, and it's really up to you. No change in circumstances can ever really prompt any emotional "response"--that response is entirely yours and yours alone. You are responsible for your own happiness, and you've got the circumstances you've got.
I noticed one day that the same circumstances and set of physical reactions can be called either "excitement" or "fear". When I noticed that, I created and instituted a practice of saying "I'm excited" whenever I experience fear.
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Originally Posted by josie
I'd call that acceptance. I think of happiness as being a step beyond this.
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That's interesting. What would you add to that to make it into happiness?
Now that you mention it, I might add something too. Perhaps in addition to being in the moment with nothing wrong and nowhere to get, there's something in the realm of... like, creating some thing new in that space and then fulfilling on it.
The other day, from that space of not-knowing, I invented that my wife lurkette should have everything she wants. Later that morning, our cat Jack stood her up for their usual snuggle on the bathroom floor bath mat. I heard her in the bathroom calling for him, so I went into the bathroom and laid down on the bath mat and she rubbed my belly and my neck and my chin just like she does with Jack, and we giggled like little kids. It was as happy as I've been in recent memory.
It wasn't the clear space that had me be happy in that moment, it was what I used it for.
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Originally Posted by josie
Do you think you can make a decision to be more open to happiness though?
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Maybe. But being "open" to it puts it back outside you again, like happiness will either fall on you or not, and if it does, you have to be "open". I don't think that's how it is. I think you either generate happiness or you generate something else. I think in any moment you can choose happiness. But you don't get there by "trying to be happy"--that's a future thing you're working on that maybe you'll get to someday. Happiness is a RIGHT NOW phenomenon.