Happiness as a choice
The reduction of your thought processes into mere patterns brings about some notable effects. Being emotionally adept and aware of your process of thought often gives you a slight advantage in being emotionally stable and intelligent, but defeats the purpose of the “feel” of life when you are rarely overwhelmed by things anymore. I had always assumed that emotional intelligence is what gets you by in life and coupled with the key of awareness, almost any enlightened individual can persevere through hardships.
At this point I would like to draw back on the insight from Hemingway when he said happiness is most rare in intelligent people. Maybe the clinically depressed are not sad, yet intelligent in a way that opens their mind to the harsh torment of the realities of life. Maybe they have understood life and existentialism in such a deep context that they’ve discovered the meaninglessness of it all. Knowledge is inevitably saddening.
On a lighter note, the meat of this post comes into play. If you can train yourself to be adept at recognizing your emotions, then triggers would be easier to remedy. Once you’ve learned to handle certain situations that bring about the recognizable patterns of emotions, they simply become mindsets which you can mentally turn on and off. It may require aid, like certain songs that pump you up or bring you down, but it’s the play of your mind directing how you feel. Given the aforementioned, happiness can always come into context whenever you’re down, but it’s the individual’s pure choice whether to dwell in sadness or not. Sometimes sadness makes us step back and recognize what just happened and reflect on how it can build us. But at some points, thinking positively is what drives us.
We are social beings and it’s essential to coincide with those around you. Their feelings, situations, emotions all come into a huge cesspool of influence on your own self-actualization.
Happiness may be a choice, but when has your decision been entirely dependent on your own influence? Have you ever made a sole choice based on your own, subconsciously socially-influenced mind?
Ladies and gentlemen, my little brother. Socrates at fifteen years old.
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