The Pursuit of Unhappiness: A Trilogy

Lately I've had a fair amount to be happy about. I got good results in my exam, my job interview was successful and I start next week, my English coursework is FINALLY getting somewhere near the grade I want and my musical endeavours actually seem to be going in the right direction. All of these things have combined to make me a rather tired, yet extremely happy individual.

There is, however, a down side.....

I've noticed a pattern over the last year or so that every time i find myself in a generally happy mood, those around me are miserable. It seems that I can never be mutually happy with any majority of my friends or family.

I have spent quite a significant amount of time (perhaps too much) pondering this situation to come up with a cause. I narrowed it down to three.

The first and perhaps most logical: Coincidence.

Pure coincidence can more often than not be the reason for everything. As a people the Human Race has spent most of its existence trying to find order and meaning in things that most probably don't have one. We see this in the sheer number of varying religions, the way we analyse literature to find some deeper meaning in an authors words when really they're just talking about how crappy the weather is and many other things that appear to have an improbable significance. If something bad happens and someone asks their priest "If God exists then why would he let this happen?" the stereotypical reply is "The Lord works in mysterious ways". An Atheist's interpretation of that answer, and a suitable one for this scenario, would be "Sometimes life just sucks. There's no real reason for it, that's just how it works sometimes." So maybe sometimes my friend's just have a bad time of it when I'm not. Luck of the draw I suppose.

The second possible cause and in the words of Aardman creation Mr Tweedy: "It's all in your 'e'd!"

Maybe it is. Maybe my current heightened state of happiness is warping my perspective of the situation. The fact that I am happy at the current time could make it seem as those others are more miserable than usual; or perhaps they have always been this unhappy and my common miserable state of mind caused it go unnoticed. Either way perhaps I'm making too much of it all.

The final conclusion I came up with.........well I couldn't.

I don't see any reason for people to be unhappy with their lives. Yes sometimes your life sucks and sometimes you can't do anything about it but I'm a firm believer that unhappiness is, for the most part, self inflicted. People seem to find it so easy to take a negative view of the world and treat it accordingly. More and more people are spending their time feeling sorry for themselves. Misery loves company and it NEVER struggles to find any. Perhaps these people need to focus on the positives in their lives, ignore the negatives, leave them in the past and look toward all the amazing possibilities in their future. I know I sound harsh and inconsiderate but sometimes people just forget how much potential to be happy they really have.

So maybe it's that great force of coincidence, maybe it's me or maybe it's people struggling to notice how amazing and happy they can really be. Whatever the case I think most importantly what people need to remember is that their friends are always there. Even people who feel like they have nobody still have someone in their lives who is happy enough to help them through the hard times. Maybe it's somebody close to you or maybe it's a person you wouldn't expect it to be but there is always somebody.

Right now I'm one of those people. Maybe next week I won't be but for now I'm here to help those friends who need it. Just thought you should know.

Till next time....