Happiness is an emotion, like sadness, excitement, fear and jealousy. All emotions are fleeting, they come and go. Some stay longer than others. Happiness might reside with us for a few hours, but soon enough another emotion such as worry or fear will pop up and we use our emotional intelligence to negotiate the inner dialogue attached to each emotion. We weave in and out of our own emotional landscape, navigating a plethora of emotions on an hourly basis. If we are very mindful we can create some space between the emotion and our true selves. Hopefully enough space to observe the emotion, acknowledge it’s presence, discover why it appeared and then ultimately accept it before letting it go. Sometimes this process takes a few minutes, sometimes it takes a few hours and sometimes it takes a few years. Ultimately emotions come and go. If we are intelligent humans, why are we chasing a single transient emotion? Is happiness the wrong word? Are we using the wrong word to describe the illusive state of being we know to be the ultimate?
Happiness and sadness are two sides of the same coin and they can ‘flip’ just as quickly from one side to the other. Have you ever felt so happy you could burst? ... and then one small thing happens to alter the equation and the ‘gloss’ is taken off your happiness. How can that happen? How can one small alteration cause you to go from extreme happiness to feeling deflated? The coin flips over. You cannot have one side without the other. One exists because of the other. It’s like that old saying ‘you can’t know hot without knowing cold’. We cannot know happiness without knowing sadness. So are we all chasing one side of a coin? Trying to balance it so it cannot flip. Ignoring the existence of the other side of the coin? Denying sadness its rightful place in the world? Sadness has its purposes one of which is to allow me to understand it’s twin more deeply. I understand, appreciate and cherish happiness more because I know sadness. Had I never met sadness... I would not know happiness existed.
I wonder if we can better articulate the state we wish to reside in? Are we actually searching for inner peace? A state of being where we can observe our emotions, negotiate them and then release them. As if we are sitting on a beach and see a wild horse walk by. Imagine the wild horse is your emotion of jealousy. We could attach ourselves to the horse (jealousy) and ride it bareback trying to stay on it’s back and not really being in control of where it takes us. I’m pretty sure I’ve ridden that particular wild horse once or twice and it can be a pretty wild ride! Or, can we observe the horse from the beach, acknowledge it’s presence, watch it buck and kick, say hello to it “Oh hi, it’s you again, my old friend jealousy”. Watching what a fuss it makes and feeling the effect in our body. Then allow it when it’s ready to run away back into the distance. Back to where it came from. We are not denying it’s existence, we are not running away from it in fear, we are not hiding from it. We are simply shining the light of awareness onto it and allowing it to come and then go. Could the same be said for happiness? What if that too was a wild horse we see from our stand point on the beach. We see it approach and we feel the effect it has on our body. What if instead of jumping straight onto its back, we observed it, enjoyed it for what it is and then when it was ready allowed it to continue on down the beach, back to where it came from? We could still get joy from the experience, but by not being ‘attached’ to it’s back we don’t feel the deflation when it leaves. We can welcome it and then wave it goodbye all the while maintaining a comfortable and peaceful existence within.
The feelings which might have a negative impact on us such as anger, fear, jealousy have a legitimate place in our world. If we can shine the same light of awareness onto them as we do to their twins, happiness, love and trust we might be getting closer to finding a long lasting, ever present, eternal sense of inner peace. I like the idea of searching for a calm and solid position on the beach rather than a hard to control wild ride.
I think this might be what I’m looking for, a position on the beach which gives me some space between the advancing and retreating emotions. A position which offers the opportunity to enjoy each emotion, to feel it and acknowledge each one as it appears and disappears, without losing myself. Perhaps if we change the focus of our search, from trying to be ‘happy’ to finding a comfortable position on the beach we might find the happiness horse comes galloping by more often?
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