Obstacles to Happiness

I must had a smile on my face earlier today while at the laundromat for the person working there told me that I look very happy. I told him that I don't see any reason why I shouldn't. I thought of reasons in my mind but really there should be no reasons I need to think of. After all, happiness is our natural state. Happiness is the natural state of children, until they have been polluted by the stupidity so prevalent in society and culture. To acquire happiness, you don't have to do anything because happiness cannot be acquired. You have it already. How can you acquire what you already have?

Then why don't you experience it? Because you've to drop what you're carrying. You don't have to add anything in order to be happy; you've got to drop something. Life is hard only when you have your illusions, your ambitions, your greed, your cravings, etc. Do you know where these things come from? They exist from you identifying yourself with labels of every variety.

There was a lawyer who was presented with a plumber's bill. He said to the plumber, "Hey, you're charging me $200 an hour. I don't make that kind of money as a lawyer!" The plumber said, "I didn't make that kind of money when I was a lawyer either!" You could be a plumber or lawyer but that shouldn't affect the essential "I". If I change my profession tomorrow, it's just like changing my clothes. I am untouched! Are you your clothes? Are you your name? Are you your profession? Stop identifying with them. They come and they leave.

When you truly understand this, no criticism can affect you. No flattery or praise can affect you either. When someone says, "You're a good guy," what is he saying? He's not talking about "I." "I" am neither good nor bad. "I" am neither a success nor a failure. It's none of these labels. These labels depend on the criteria society establishes. These labels depend on your conditioning - your level of being brainwashed by your culture, society, and people you know. These labels depend on the mood of the person who happens to be talking to you right now. "I" am none of these labels.

Uninterrupted happiness requires no cause. True happiness is just there. You cannot make me happy and you are not my happiness, whoever or whatever you happen to be. Someone can ask the awakened person, "Why are you happy?" and the awakened person replies, "Why not?". That is the only answer possible.

Equation of Happiness

I'm going to tell you an interesting story. Now, normally when someone says this to you, you know that you're in a long haul for a story that's likely anything but interesting. Since this is Shen Ge though and if you know him at all you know he's anything but boring, if you want to hear something interesting you'll just read on.

I was at the Texas Young Professional social earlier this evening and I met an engineer that's in between jobs. I talked to him for a good while since I was interested in what he did. His card read MBA/Engineer so of course that caught my attention. I humorously commented that he must be feeling pretty jaded about engineering these days considering his job situation. I started saying that I was feeling pretty jaded about school earlier. He interrupted me and said that industry was worse. He went on for a bit and it became obvious that he hated his job though he worked at it for a good number of years. There were no design and building aspects to it; instead it was endless boring projects that he had little to no interest in.

I mentioned the guy to my boss Joe later whom Joe also met and we both came to the one-word conclusion that he was pathetic. At that moment, I suddenly thought of an equation of happiness which can be applied to anyone:

(Hours of unhappiness)X(Unhappiness weight) - (Hours of happiness)X(Happiness weight) = Overall happiness in a typical day

Now, I applied the equation to myself for a typical day:

Hours of unhappiness: 4 (Source: frustration, anger, fear of failure, worry, stress overall)

Unhappiness weight: 2

Hours of happiness: 10 (Source: talking to cool people, learning cool things, doing cool things, seeing my future vision taking hold from hard work)

Happiness weight: 3

This leads me to have an overall happiness of +22. Not bad. Then I did it for this guy when he was working at the oil&gas engineering firm:

Hours of unhappiness: 8 (Source: just about everything at work)

Unhappiness weight: 5

Hours of happiness: 6 (Source: TV? Family? Hobbies? Social events? Internet? Note: Does not include sleeping, commuting, eating, etc.)

Happiness weight: 3 (Guessed)

This leads him to have an overall happiness of -22. In other words, he's really unhappy on a typical workday. Now I know these numbers are estimated but it's a fairly accurate representation.

Do you feel excited about your current full-time job? If not, quit your current job. Think about it! You spend at least 40 hours a week on your job; it takes up much of your waking life. Do you really want those 40 hours to drain away your happiness or do you want those 40 hours to give you happiness?

This is something even a village idiot can answer but yet many people are somehow willing to be more foolish than a village idiot. They do jobs that obviously bring no level of life satisfaction to them but instead of trying something different and possibly more fulfilling, they stick with their happiness-draining job for material things like money and stability. In the meantime, they slowly become jaded grouches since all their joy in life have withered away after an extended period of self-imposed dissatisfaction.

The analogy here for some people is stepping into a room of leeches and instead of quickly walking away, they just lie there and let the leeches suck away their blood because they somehow think the leeches will magically disappear if they stay still long enough. After a while some of them do get up and leave but if they leave too late, they're dried-up husks by the time they leave. In other words, they have completely lost their passion towards life which they almost definitely possessed as kids.

Anyways, let me know what you think of my happiness equation and the relation to reality. I think there's a lot of truths to it that many otherwise intelligent people do not see. Not trying to be arrogant here but I tend to reflect on life more than most people which can often give me more insight on life.