Happy Little Vegemites

It’s one of our most basic emotions, yet so fleeting and inaccessible for many. Twenty billion dollars a year are spent on pharmaceutical solutions to treat our chronic lack of serotonin.

Surely there must be a better way.

The problem is, modern man is chronically unhappy. Due to accesibility, he wants too much, expects too much, and wants it all now. If he can get a Happy Meal with five food groups and a toy in three minutes without leaving his car, shouldn’t he expect the same in other areas of his life?

So he tries, he constantly searches for things to make him happy. Successful career, braggable hobbies, supermodel partner, two and a half kids. The perfect life. Surely this will bring everlasting happiness?

Well, there are a few fundamental problems.

Firstly, these sources are external. Our influence is inherently limited, we can only do so much to change things before we are at the whim of other people’s emotions and the fickle hand of fate. You can trim the sails as best you can, but the wind will always direct the boat.

Secondly, all these sources are fleeting and transient. The impermanence of life is reflected in its components. Jobs don’t last, supermodel partner gets a better offer, holidays come to an end. Add unpredictability to impermanence, and the only thing you can guarantee is that there is no guarantee.

Lastly, transient sources of happiness are similar to recreational drugs. The more you take, the lesser the effect. The human body becomes densensitised and tolerant. So we need more. The bigger car, rapid career progression, holidays in more expensive hotels. It’s a unrelenting search for increasing levels of happiness.

So, what’s the better way? Well, take the monk. Wearing a bedsheet, head shaven, under a tree contemplating why that cloud looks like an apricot and the other looks like a squashed pomegranate. He’s not even wearing underwear and he’s the happiest man on earth. How is this possible?

He simply chooses to be happy.

Instead of running around looking for sources of happiness, he increases his basal level of happiness. He achieves chronic happiness independant of external stimuli. It then doesn’t matter what happens, because he is already happy.

On a physiological level, choosing to be internally happy has similar effects to meditation which functional magnetic resonance imaging has shown to increase levels of serotonin in the brain.

Well that’s very cute but we can’t all sit around all day wondering why clouds resemble fruit. It’s shit boring.

And that’s the beauty of it. Because we are running on internal happiness, we no longer need to do things to make us happy. We do them for the best reason of all - because we want to.

We stop becoming hostages of ourselves, demanding we find happiness from everything. We are free to do whatever we want, knowing the outcome is irrelevant. Failure ceases to be a demon of fear. It becomes an undesired outcome that gives up experience, whilst not taking our happiness.

This allows us to enjoy the ride, appreciating things for what they are, not for what we want to get out of them. We don’t need to rush around desperately searching for happiness.

Because we already have it.