In fact, the purpose of this article is to answer the question of how we can be happy, or to relativize the meaning of happiness rather than denying its importance or meaning in human life, and to remind us to review the things we miss while attributing so much meaning to happiness.
Many things constantly appear before us that make us think that it has become a duty; In commercials you see that you will be happy when you market a chocolate bar, in romantic comedy movies/series you are happy when you find the "love of your life"! So, is happiness really possible with these consumption objects or a person entering our lives? Or is there such a thing as absolute happiness?
Happiness has gained a normative meaning in today's society/age. The dictatorship of happiness doesn't seem to leave much room for allowing oneself to be unhappy. As those who are seemingly happy insist on their happiness, the unhappy find themselves further outside.
Perhaps the most possible way to reduce unhappiness is to give it the opportunity to exist. Nowadays, unpleasant feelings such as unhappiness and malaise are marginalized and you are not even allowed to experience them: Did you break up with your lover? You should go on vacation. Have you had a negative experience with your friend? You should remove him from your life because no one should make you unhappy. What is meant here is that sometimes it is useless to try to change the emotional state without even giving the opportunity to think about the situation, mourn, and digest the loss.
So what is happiness? Happiness is mostly referred to as "subjective well-being" in the psychological literature. Subjective well-being is defined as the excess of positive emotions felt by the person over negative emotions and the satisfaction received from life in general (Diener, 1984).
Happiness is often the result of happy coincidences. It is nice to be able to enjoy and love life, but this is not possible for everyone at all times. There may be an unpleasantness corresponding to every pleasant situation, a bad state corresponding to every good state, and a state of unhappiness following every happiness. In fact, like every opposite, happiness needs its opposite. Many seek happiness in a state of uninterrupted pleasantness, constant joy and abundant fun. However, looking for happiness in such pleasure is the reason for being unhappy. It is the most permanent way.
It is one of the sentences we hear most today; “Think positive!”. Positive thinking inspires people to see problematic situations from another perspective. However, thinking positive becomes a problem if it leads to a desire to only see the positive. The glass is not always half full or half empty, sometimes it is completely empty. Only when we realize this in time do we have the opportunity to fill it.
In modern society, more and more people suffer from a lack of meaning. And in almost every field and on every plane; in making sense of work, one's own life, and life. Meaning is a power that gives strength and motivates a person. Modern man searches for meaning in happiness, but happiness cannot replace meaning. For this reason, insistence on trying to achieve happiness may be a sign of despair caused by a lack of meaning. However, feeling unhappy is actually a good way to think about meaning, that is, to question meaning from time to time. In fact, when we look at it, we can see that most of the admirable things that have happened in the history of humanity are actually the result of dissatisfaction.
According to Freud, it is the pleasure principle that creates and regulates the purpose of human life. It states that what is called happiness in its narrowest sense comes from the sudden satisfaction of repressed needs that have reached great intensity and which by their nature can only be a temporary experience.
The satisfaction of the instincts is happiness, but when the external world allows us to starve and refuses to meet our needs, great suffering is experienced. They become the reason. Thus, the hope arises that the person can escape some pain by influencing these impulses.
According to Freud, many different paths can be taken for happiness: some seek the positive aspect of the goal, that is, to enjoy, while others seek the negative aspect, that is, avoiding pain. None of these ways will give us what we desire. According to this altered perception of what we see as attainable, happiness is a matter of each individual's libidinal economy. There is no one-size-fits-all prescription on this matter; Everyone needs to find out on their own which way they will reach happiness.
Perhaps the biggest thing we do in daily life is One of the biggest mistakes is finding happiness in “Who am I? What do I want? What gives me pleasure? Finding such questions in the products/values/beliefs imposed by popular culture without asking ourselves; Maybe it's because we channel happiness into a single area. Just as a businessman does not invest all his capital in a single field, we will remain incomplete as long as we expect all happiness from a single field (money, career, love, etc.). At this point, not avoiding getting support when we feel that we have reached meaninglessness will be an important favor we can do to ourselves.
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