Sunday, November 18, 2007

A question

Do people actually want to be happy?

10 comments:

Nick Drew said...

hurhh ... the difficult ones first, eh?

OK, I'll start

YES

(though they like a good moan from time to time)

now I'll pose another

do people secretly think they are going to live forever?

Salete Lemos said...

Hello
I visited your blog.
I am Brazilian, Sao Paulo and I have a blog on varieties. Visit:
Http://vagandopelaweb.blogspot.com/
Good luck!

Sackerson said...

Hi Nick:

The reason I ask the question, is that what people do is so often not explicable if you think that all they want is happiness for themselves and others.

Yes, I think the natural condition and desire of humankind is happiness, but it is obstructed by patterns that inherently demand to be repeated or completed; patterns that can be abandoned, though so many don't realise it.

I came across Eric Berne's "Games People Play" in the 70s, and the notion of scripts is so powerful. He describes an array of patterned behaviours that have undesirable effects, but in a twisted way provide some affirmation to the "player". Berne points out that the behaviour is often in the form of an unwritten script or plot that requires somebody else to play a supporting role, and unconsciously we tend to fall in with the pattern and adopt the part it offers us. So when you're wised up to transactional analysis, you may spot the script (and the planned ending) and disrupt the pattern - do something "out of character" for the role you've been assigned. Of course, we're generating these scripts ourselves, too.

As with TV soaps, character outlasts and generates incidents. If you have a harmful conception of yourself and your life, you will repeat old toxic stories and write new ones. Think of Charlie Brown from Peanuts.

So it's not enough to spot and interrupt a particular negative pattern of behaviour. In order to be happy, you have to feel that you deserve it, or are somehow destined for it. And if you're not to create unhappiness for others, you need to define happiness in helpful ways. Otherwise, you get hooked on particular targets. Think how Robert Maxwell ruined himself and many others, because he was trying to compete with Rupert Murdoch, so he went one deal
too far and bankrupted his companies and pension schemes. If he'd stopped before buying Macmillan, he might have been remembered as a war hero, successful businessman and philanthropist, albeit with a "colourful" past business and personal history.

Why did I ask the question in the first place? Because I've been thinking often of myself and people I've known - family, friends, young abuse victims taken into residential children's homes, and the children I now teach who've been thrown out of school because of their behaviour. The hope I have is that we can learn (and teach others) to rewrite our life plots - starting with everything that's happened so far, but developing towards a different, happy conclusion.

Nick, as to your own question, we are mortal, but it's healthy not to set our own limited horizon within that. I think people often die when their toxic lifescript demands it - either when they have failed (in the quest they undertook or think they were given) and can see no possibility of recovery, or when they have succeeded in whatever narrowly defined objective they got hooked on. Either way, they roll the credits.

So I think the first step is to let go of limiting and destructive self-conceptions. It took me so long to realise that your life-pattern isn't a given, and there could be a lot of joy in passing on that realisation.

Sackerson said...

PS: On re-reading, of course the notion of a "happy conclusion" stupidly implies some unique terminating goal, which overrides everything else you have to do and pass through on the way there. I think it's better to say, a happy path.

hatfield girl said...

None but the brave deserve the fair.

Better when Handel sets it, but it says it all: self awareness, courage, determination and aesthetic sensibility.

Nick Drew said...

what a great and totally unexpected thread

gad I love the www ! (on a good day)

Anonymous said...

I want to be happy
But I won't be happy
Till I make you happy too.
Life's really worth living
When you are mirth giving
Why can't I give some to you?
When skies are gray
And you say you are blue
I'll send the sun smiling through
I wanna be happy
But I won't be happy
Till I make you happy too.
(She won't be happy)
I won't be happy
Till the day you're happy too.

Anonymous said...

Moreover
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9AQ502JDXA

Anonymous said...

nope. my blog would suck if i were happy

Anonymous said...

Read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. This book will answer the questions you are asking. No kidding. It's a great story, too. All the best to you.