Why Do We Experience Happiness and Unhappiness?
In one of the Facebook groups I’m in, someone recently posted something like this, “Most of our unhappiness is about the meaning we assign an experience.” In the purest Zen philosophy, I suppose there’s truth to that statement. But most of us aren’t spiritually evolved to the place where we can be that Zen. Many times when we feel unhappy, it’s because we’ve experienced something that was exactly that — unhappy.
Uncertainty and Unhappiness
As many of you know, my dad passed away last summer after living with cancer for more than a year. Because he opted out of treatment, it was a year of uncertainty for him and those of us who loved him. We didn’t know when the end would happen, but my dad called himself, “A short-timer.”
Every time I saw him, I left wondering if it would be the last time. He lived almost three hours away from me, so when I wasn’t at his house, I felt I needed to be ready to go back there at a moment’s notice. It was a year of uncertainty that left me feeling drained and sad, instead of energized and happy. The most positive meaning I could assign to the experience is that it filled my heart and soul with sadness.
It was a year of lasts – my last football season with my dad, my last Christmas, Easter and Father’s Day with him, and knowing it was the last time he’d tell me happy birthday, to name a few.
Don’t misunderstand, I’m grateful that I had those moments with him, but even the happy moments were darkened by a sadness cloud. Part of me was grieving his imminent loss before he left Earth, even when I tried to be Zen and focus on the present moment.
[perfectpullquote align=”right” size=”20″]Life is full of uncertainty. Sometimes it’s hard to find a balance between a sense of living with the things we can’t control and the reality that most of us experience many happy moments sprinkled in throughout the day. [/perfectpullquote]
Life is Full of Uncertainty
At some point, everyone deals with some uncertainty that feels consuming. Some people are taking care of aging parents, some are job hunting, some are in roller-coaster relationships, and some are dealing with their own health issues. I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that many Americans feel uneasy with how our new president is governing which adds to any other feelings of uncertainty that they may have.
Life is full of uncertainty. Sometimes it’s hard to find a balance between a sense of living with the things we can’t control and the reality that most of us experience many happy moments sprinkled in throughout the day.
Happiness and Unhappiness Almost Co-Exist Simultaneously
Happiness and unhappiness can feel like they co-exist almost simultaneously. Pure co-existence would be feeling happy and sad at the exact same moment which most of us don’t do. However, we can laugh in one moment and cry in another so the feelings are so close that they almost feel simultaneous.
The secret to not allowing unhappiness to define us doesn’t come from the meaning we assign it, but from not allowing our unhappiness to define and consume us.
You can assign an unhappy experience any meaning you want. After you make that assignment, you then have to decide if that’s your stopping point in which the experience will define you, or your growing point where the experience becomes something that improves you.
During the last year of my dad’s life, I had many happy moments. I went on two soul rejuvenating trips to Colorado and Arizona. Of course, they would have been a little happier if my dad hadn’t been on the short-timers list, but they were still fun, happy trips. I had countless moments of happiness with my friends, who lifted my spirits when I needed it and let me hide in my cave when I needed that. That happiness was as real as my sadness.
In our world of all or nothing, perhaps we tend to forget that the real secret to happiness is realizing we’re not supposed to be happy all of the time. Perhaps it’s not about assigning meaning to our unhappiness that defines us, but instead, understanding that our unhappy or sad moments teach us to value our happy ones.
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Now it’s your turn. I’d like to hear about the life lessons you’ve learned from your unhappy or sad moments. Leave a comment below! And, if you know someone who could benefit from reading this article, please share it with them! Everyone deserves to appreciate and enjoy life’s happy moments, even when they are living with sadness or unhappiness in their life!
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Written by Pamela Gail
Pamela Gail Johnson founded the Society of Happy People in 1998.
The Society is grounded on Pamela’s four key Practical Happiness Principles:
Pamela identified 31 Types of Happiness that are on the SOHP App Happiness Counter to make it easier to recognize moments of happiness.
Pamela also plans and organizes the Society of Happy People's annual happiness celebrations:
She's also a speaker, trainer, and author.
A few of her personal smile starters include her monthly book club, yoga, traveling and meeting new happy people.
As a single mom, I spend every minute of my free time with my daughter making sure she is happy and healthy. I tend to take care of her and not myself. Recently, I’ve had some health issues which forced me to put myself first. What I found out is that I can make myself a priority and still be a great parent. When I’m happy and healthy so is she!
nice writeup…
member secret society of happy people
Sadness (not depression, which is a mental illness) is healthy. It’s the daily garbage of our lives. It’s the excrement of our minds. Happiness makes it possible for us to survive; so does sadness.
Sadness gives us a deeper understanding of ourselves. So does happiness. There are probably as many kinds of sadness as there are kinds of happiness, and all of them exist for good reason: we need them in order to become complete.
Sometimes they seem so intense that we want to escape them any way we can. But what would happen to your home if you never acknowledged that there was garbage there? What would happen to your body if it never got a chance to dump its waste? Yuck. And Ouch.
So appreciate all the feelings. We need every one of them, even if we don’t like them all. I don’t care for garbage or excrement, but without it… yuck. And Ouch.
Love your perspective. Brought me such comfort.
I really like what you said here Pamela, “In our world of all or nothing, perhaps we tend to forget that the real secret to happiness is realizing we’re not supposed to be happy all of the time.”…
There’s a lot of value in recognizing what makes us unhappy – not being treated well, being disrespected, social injustice, the pain of losing a loved one, and a myriad of other things that are outside of control… It helps us understand what doesn’t work for us and what we can improve to operate more in alignment with our core values and our personal truths.
if we were happy all the time, I think our personal growth would be limited because there wouldn’t be any challenges for us to grow through.
Sadness means we loved. To not have this feeling would mean that we gave little value to the passing of this event, either person, animal or moment.
A woman approached me today in the PetSmart parking lot. She wanted to complement my car. I told her thank you and what type of was. We went on to have a twenty minute conversation, I was listening more than anything, but I was engaged in the conversation.
Halfway through I learned her husband had died and she was getting used to doing things that he used to do for her, but she was so cheerful beforehand and during the conversation. You could tell she missed her husband of twenty years, but she was continuing on.
This is in contrast to one of a women she met who had lost her husband a year ago. When KD visited, (actually she met the woman because KD had found her dog, and only found her by knocking on doors after door on her street) her neighbor would cry and act lost. She went back a few months later and the lady was gone. Her daughter’s moved her into a nursing home.
Death comes for us all and we should mourn, but we should also celebrate those who have passed by living our lives to the fullest.
Michael is RIGHT ON 🙂 ALL of us will die someday..it’s a fact. ALL of us will lose people, pets and THINGS that are important to us. It’s really just the CIRCLE OF LIFE. I always feel sorry for the people who lose family members and LITERALLY….cannot live without them 🙁 That is so sad 🙁 YES- I believe a person can be HAPPY and UNHAPPY at the same time. Each person has to process grief and disappointment in their own way. On the HAPPY SIDE 🙂 We are CONSTANTLY meeting new people and having NEW experiences and LEARNING new things if we are OPEN to them 🙂 Our lost loved ones are ALWAYS WITH US-in our hearts 🙂