There Is No Happiness. There Is Just Life
As a psychoanalyst, I am inclined to go with Freud’s definition of happiness. For him, essentially, there is no happiness, there is just life.
Contardo Calligares is one of the most famous psychoanalysts in Brazil, and during an interview he summed this up quite well:
“I don’t have much interest for happiness. I lived the 60s, did all the things that I wanted, spent some time in India and Nepal, and I could have stayed there, on drugs, if happiness was what I wanted.
I would be living until today in Katmandu, half naked, with the monkeys, shopping on the stores that sell everything that one could desire, in different quantities and qualities, for a dead cheap price.
If I wanted happiness, why would I leave such a place?
It is not happiness that I find interesting.
What I find interesting is life, it is the intensity of the experiences, the good ones and the bad ones.
If I need to feel the pain because my father died, or my dog, or because I separated from someone that I loved, I will cry for real. And crying is good, it is part of feeling those experiences.”
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I have to agree with Contardo Calligares. Especially this part:
“What I find interesting is life, it is the intensity of the experiences, the good ones and the bad ones.”
And I, typically, find most experiences at my age aren’t necessarily bad ones. I believe most of the bad experience in my 60 years of life have passed. And if something “bad” happens? It’s not to be taken all that seriously.
What is happiness to me? Being myself, doing things that make me happy and trying to help other’s have good experiences.
I have a daily goal which is to make at least one person laugh.
That, too, makes me feel good.