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'Happiness is antidepressants with no side effects...'
Or is it simply the absence of unhappiness?
People, who admit to an unhappy life, are often viewed as ungrateful, negative, losers...who should get a grip and get out more. Apparently, they should embrace what joys they are blessed to have and 'stop the whining', 'the excuses' and to 'grab life by the bollocks and enjoy the ride.'
From my experience, some people are seemingly 'born' unhappy and continue through life feeling so, despite a climate that should foster their happiness. This only adds to the frustration and confusion of feeling irrationally sad. If your happiness remains stagnate whatever you do, striving for success seems pointless, unless it's for the benefit of another person's happiness. Making my 4 year old laugh has got to be the best thing in the world.
Perhaps happiness is more a genetic, personality trait than we credit it to be. I was nurtured to be a positive person, even more so as I have a disability, but something went awry. Since concluding that I'm a lost cause, bad experiences and circumstances seem to follow me around or I purposefully go looking for them. My siblings are happy people, or so they claim. It's hard not to resent them for it and much easier to present a facade to them that life is alright (and I don't need their advice). I want their high expectations for me to remain as it raises my self-esteem.
Perhaps people, who hold that happiness is a predetermined thing, are actually self-fulfilling their own prophesies? Does a supposed happiness formula lie with what you convince yourself to accept or perceive?
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