THE ADVERSE REACTION TO THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
“My world has just reached perfection; midnight is also noon. Pain is also pleasure, curse is also blessing, night is also a sun; go away from here, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Did you ever say yes to pleasure? Oh, my friends, then you also said yes to all suffering. All things are chained, intertwined, bound by love. And if you ever wanted twice what you wanted once, if you ever said: ‘I like you, happiness! Come back soon, moment!’, then you wanted the return of everything. Everything anew, everything eternally, everything chained, intertwined, bound by love; then, you loved the world…” (Nietzsche)
Achieving an ascending and gratifying career, maintaining a high-quality presence in family life, having significant social involvement, and experiencing personal satisfaction and pleasure seem increasingly elusive. In this world where changes occur every second, and immediacy is a constant factor in everyone’s life, a pertinent question arises: Does all this lead to a reflection on what guides the variables to find the much-desired happiness?
In contemporary capitalist culture, a new paradigm emerges – the singularity of being happy – where unhappiness has become a kind of behavioral obscenity. As if pain or suffering could no longer be part of life. The need for this contradiction marks the condition for living. The natural weariness of the body, the imperfections of social rules, and the capricious demands for well-being and satisfaction, coupled with insecurity, intolerance, isolation, routine, financial instability, professional pressure, immediacy, and many other tormenting symptoms of modern society, generate an anguish that has never been so present. If all the wear and tear that makes up modern life were not enough, there is still social pressure for the omnipresent condition that one must be happy to live. Of course, it couldn’t be different; in the end, these triggers end up being responsible for many of the ills present in society, such as depression, anxiety, compulsions, and many other ailments that revolve around an increasingly individualistic and psychologically sick world.
Perhaps this justifies why in the consultations I do for my clients, in the sessions I conduct in my office, in informal conversations with my friends, and even when I participate in a more heated debate, there is a consensus: when trying to put into practice the proposed social rules of happiness for better well-being, it doesn’t work! That’s why I am increasingly convinced that self-help and happiness go in opposite directions and that the idea that we must be happy to savor the best of ourselves and find the excellence in living makes no sense. On the contrary, what is perceived today is that living in this pursuit, under the authority that one must be happy, actually brings you closer and closer to an unhappy life.
What does all this reveal about our way of living?
Until the 18th century, happiness made more sense as an attribute of life, where life exclusively was, and indeed could not be anywhere else. From then on, the understanding that in this exclusive and immediate place is where value is given, the awareness of the world as it is in the face of compulsory affections, has been lost, fading alterity. Alterity is the field of relationship with the other, social ties, and this was the fundamental point. Given this perspective, the sensitivity to understand the importance of the relationships established between subjectivities and the changes in the social, political, economic, financial order, and everything else that encompasses life to make it collectively good has been decreasing.
Then the hedonistic idea arises, so to speak, which begins to take on social consistency from utilitarianism. Around the 19th century, philosophers like Jeremy Bentham and James Mill widely advocated for a new perspective on economic principles linking normative and objective ethics to answer all questions about doing, admiring, and living in terms of utility related to happiness. They supported the theory that the need to be useful is in function of the tendency to increase or decrease the well-being of the affected parties according to their utility, represented mainly from a capital perspective.
With the 20th century, the production society strengthened with the idea that each person is an object or rather a production unit. The recognition of BEING is established from HAVING. The concept of sociability narrows, impacting directly on the formation of a much more individualistic spirit, prevailing production as an object, and the conceptualization of income as the decisive factor in social recognition. The essence of the change from then on focuses on the individual, preventing an eye for the other, reflecting drastically on the fundamental concepts for social well-being, distorting capital values, ethics, and morality.
It constituted, then, the society of consumer production, accentuating and prevailing the paradoxical individualistic characteristic, generating what can be called capitalist narcissism. A more individualistic model of living was adopted, moving from plurality to the singularity of being, now concerning oneself with the vision of others, giving importance to trivialities. Hence, elements like appearances and the accumulation of wealth and possessions became a condition. In other words, a contradiction was established between individuality driven by egocentrism and, at the same time, the need for approval from others, making the concreteness of BEING almost insignificant. In the past, part of freedom was sacrificed for security, but today, security is sacrificed for freedom at any cost. It is no wonder that we live in a “democratic and free” world of possession and concessions, but it can hardly be said that all this has made people happier.
Happiness and modern life may indeed be paradoxical counterpoints!
As a consequence, much of this subjectivity has increasingly gained strength from experiences governed by globalized society, in the imposition of mega-trends, whether social or technological, reflected in coexistence, relationships, and the universalization of social standards. This leads to a reflection resulting from the formation of a liquid society, as Bauman says: “The liquidity of society arises from its inability to take on a fixed form. It transforms daily, takes the forms that the market forces it to take.” Entrenched in the perspective of life being led by personal needs, where morality becomes flexible according to individual strategies of convenience and the pursuit of freedom, regardless of the consequences to achieve the false sense of happiness.
Happiness has become predominantly linked to the compulsory values of a social norm, making it difficult to accept those who differ in their way of thinking, with the exclusion and distancing of differences. This effectively represents the other as a secondary relationship, consequently allowing judgment of others’ imperfections without being able to perceive one’s own imperfections. Liquid society has limited human capacity to think, create, invent, and extrapolate other ways of living through other possibilities, as if a flood of ready-made ideas and images had washed away intellectual competence, extracting intelligence from you to reflect on your own life and autonomously make choices.
From individual choices in the face of an imminent socially contaminated logic of what should or should not be pursued for life to be good, the individualistic and distorted concept of happiness is linked, as norms intertwine between the egocentric perspective of loving oneself and the need to be happy, always.
The radicalization of this model brought serious consequences to modern life with the singularity of being and the need for simplification of living, whether in relationships, pleasure, or even the sense of urgency, all at the same speed that is continuously pressured by the pursuit of happiness. With increasingly superficial choices, propagating individualistic attitudes and further away from accepting the simple joy of living present life as it is.
“It is necessary to take care of the things that bring happiness because, when it is present, we have everything, but without it, we do everything to achieve it!” (Epicurus)
There is no denying that the 20th century was marked as “the era of the brain,” with numerous fascinating research studies on the human mind. Still, it also brought along, in a parasitic way, the ideology that it is possible to unravel all human behavior, as if man could be completely cataloged, subject to finding compulsory regulations, true ready-made recipes applicable to anyone, making them better, more understandable, more capable, and efficient. As if it were possible to overcome all internal and external problems, frustrations, traumas, chance, and the marks left by lived experiences. In this contemporary framework, in this intellectual void, numerous opportunists emerge, true charlatans. You come across them at every moment. Seductive, they soon appear with promises to solve your woes and make you find the much-desired happiness. There are many of them—fashionable creators, brilliant visionaries, splendid futurists, dizzying therapists, stunning entrepreneurs, fearsome industrialists, motivational gurus—all of them bring enchanting formulas, swearing to transform anyone’s life. Inside their manuals are ready-made recipes, real antidotes, magical portions of certain illusions of a sublime and happy life.
“The happiness is like an obligation or death, in a way that makes us feel guilty when we are not happy. At every step we take, we are bombarded with information, advice, tips, and warnings about the priorities and needs for life to be happy…”
In this line, there are countless publications, in various focuses and areas, covering everything from cultivating more meaningful relationships, developing the perfect career, becoming an exemplary leader, living a perfect marriage, making money, building dreams, finding joy, having a perfect body, finding the ideal person, and much more. Among many other superficialities, what couldn’t be missing is the guarantee of achieving the coveted dream of professional and personal success. And all of this, filled with a single premise, the certainty of complete happiness!
About happiness, only on the Amazon website, there are almost 15,000 self-help titles promising a better life, the achievement of dreams, and that, in the end, of course, will prescribe the answer to finding the long-desired happiness. On platforms like TED, it’s no different. In a quick search, you can find almost 100 presentations that deal with happiness as the ultimate reason. And if you check the number of lectures and workshops currently hired in the corporate world, there is no doubt, in the vast majority, the motivational theme of how to be happy is predominantly dominant. Moreover, practically all images associated with consumer goods are followed by messages with recipes for being happy. Perhaps that’s why happiness has become synonymous with a fleeting life. The answer to perception, nostalgia, and hope. In other words, happiness has become synonymous with all goods and also with all ailments. This proposal eliminates from each individual the responsibility for their own choices, their own desires. A happiness in bulk, for everyone in the face of the universalization of the human being, common sense and not exclusive, based on the individual, that is, it is the same as saying that this absurd folly ensures the justification of one’s own actions because one who cannot access it is because, in reality, they have some kind of problem. No wonder, in post-modern society, happiness has been shifted from the dream of being happy to the field of ideals. As a result, the recognition of one’s own values has become inadequate for most people.
Every choice implies a competence that is to assign value to possibilities in a pluralistic and responsible way. Every choice is the identification of the alternative of greater value. Every time you think about value, you obviously run into a referential problem. As the reference now is only the need to be happy, giving life a singular form eliminates the risk of representative changes, without the need to give different values to the same thing, reflecting on the folly of differentiating one’s own values, which actually becomes a barrier to recognizing one’s own love and ultimately putting an end to one’s own happiness. What may have been lost is the understanding that the greater the lucidity about this complexity, the greater the awareness of one’s own actions and consequently one’s own values, therefore, the greater the anguish when making a decision. In other words, the experiences lived represent the evolutionary journey and are in the plurality of one’s own choices to truly be who you are. That’s why, make no mistake, every choice only exists in the comparative measure between two or more things, and for this, it is necessary to be present and in motion, to know to recognize and recognize to choose better. It is necessary to observe to differentiate, otherwise, how will we be able to choose without knowing?
It is exactly for this reason that every choice, when it is effectively a choice, often generates doubt, confusion, insecurity that turns into anguish for those who have to choose – the lucidity that each one is what he chooses. For these and other reasons, the frantic pursuit of happiness represents a very comfortable and singular view, without the anguish of choosing when it abdicates accepting living life and everything in it because there is no effort, risk, and affliction, where mistakenly it seems much easier to close your eyes and outsource deliberative activities. Of course, in this way, what there is is the illusion that responsibility is now the other’s and not yours. Which ultimately represents an existential paradox, since if you don’t know how to value, you will never know what you are actually seeking.
It is not wrong to say that projecting life without value is accepting the imposition of another’s life, removing the foundation of being who you really are, and without realizing it, transforming life into a problem because there will never be enough. The big mistake, therefore, is that the liquidity of being now the other and not yourself actually becomes the most difficult journey, blinding from the sensitive reality of realizing and distinguishing what are the issues that are exclusively individual and depend only on you. Thus, it prevents introspective perception from focusing on your own world along with your own virtues, experiencing your own experiences, desiring your own desires, and ultimately being who you really are. Otherwise, what remains is the unhappiness of never recognizing the moments when you are happy!
What has been exposed so far is a small reflection that has only the intention of representing some points from my perspective on the subject and that with this, I hope it helps you to reflect a little more on the importance of living your own life, being present in the now without compelling the despair of being happy. In modern life, there is an obvious distortion of what happiness is and what it represents, forgetting that it may symbolize a much rarer competence among each one, and that should constitute the particular know-how of first recognizing who you are, enjoying what is yours, liking what you have already achieved, and not living in the pursuit of other people’s goals thinking that this is relevant to your fullness of living since, in the end, this way they always slip through your fingers whether you fail or succeed.
The agony of having to be happy makes life a sad problem of eternal search. Living the pain of the illusion of immeasurable temporality represents a happiness that ends up being hopeless, reflecting on the mismatches of the body itself and the relationships with the world. With no other way, this will imply suffering from the painful sensation of incompetence in not being able to find the possibility of enjoying life, even if for a few moments, present in the present. Leading then to justify life and everything in it as a victim of chance, condemned for having missed opportunities, becoming a mere spectator overcome by the nostalgia of memory whether the hope of duty or the mismatch of finding within yourself the peace, which should only belong to you.
The projection of becoming is in the now, and you are largely responsible for anticipating it, at least the part of it that you can control, what will happen in your trajectory, since if there is any equation for a happy life, it is exactly in a temporality where the present of the past, the present of the present, and the present of the future are promisingly and impulsively articulated, exclusively within each one. This happens every moment of life. Each moment of life represents exclusivity, the only way of being that will never be repeated, characterizing the response of an equation that is composed of parts of the choices you make for yourself, in the face of uninterrupted relationships with the world that affects everyone at all times and part of life itself, which we can call chance, so to speak. An equation that must stand out between what we remember, what happens in the present of life, and what will auspiciously happen. The equation permeates between nostalgia, the possibility of perceiving the world in the now, and hope, so to speak. Happiness has to be embedded in there in the middle so that it can make sense in the small right moments of a homeostasis of living.
We all live within a vital sine wave, where the energy of life oscillates according to our own affections, our own relationships with the world that does not stop affecting us in the same way that we affect it incessantly. Be aware that vital energy fluctuates with affections and is necessary to live, it does not depend exclusively on you because life and everything in it, systemically, will never be the same as it was in this moment. Life is constantly changing, transforming, and systemically influencing everything and each part of you and vice versa. And it is precisely in this freedom that life proposes not to be what it is anymore (since this moment has already passed), the possibility of you being better, of making new choices, of starting over in the unprecedented. To realize this continuous fluctuation of vital energy is what makes it possible to experience and build essential values for the range of evolutionary diversity and perhaps, it is this perception that can bring you closer to happiness. Only in the face of this awareness, of this flow of life that is in small movements, is it possible to learn that there is only the materiality of life in the now, present in the presence of being what it is when completely in place.
For all, I really confess that I cannot imagine someone being happy all the time, and I recognize that I have many suspicions of people who say they feel that way. And if all this still makes sense to you, then I admit that a large part of me considers the lack of happiness not as a punishment or guilt that I have to carry, but as highly productive realism that makes me move in search of the excellence of life so that the simple act of living makes sense and that, when I find it, it, happiness, really has all the value for me and perhaps then, I recognize that I have indeed been, at that moment, eternally HAPPY.
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¡Hola, soy Marcello de Souza! Comencé mi carrera en 1997 como líder y gerente en una gran empresa del mercado de TI y Telecomunicaciones. Desde entonces, he participado en importantes proyectos de estructuración, implementación y optimización de redes de telecomunicaciones en Brasil. Inquieto y apasionado por la psicología del comportamiento y social. En 2008, decidí adentrarme en el universo de la mente humana.
Desde entonces, me he convertido en un profesional apasionado por descifrar los secretos del comportamiento humano y catalizar cambios positivos en individuos y organizaciones. Doctor en Psicología Social, con más de 25 años de experiencia en Desarrollo Cognitivo Conductual y Organizacional Humano. Con una amplia carrera, destaco mi actuación como:
– Master Coach Sénior y Formador: Guiando a mis clientes en la búsqueda de metas y desarrollo personal y profesional, obteniendo resultados extraordinarios.
– Chief Happiness Officer (CHO): Fomentando una cultura organizacional de felicidad y bienestar, impulsando la productividad y la participación de los empleados.
– Experto en Lenguaje y Desarrollo del Comportamiento: Potenciando habilidades de comunicación y autoconocimiento, capacitando a individuos para enfrentar desafíos con resiliencia.
– Terapeuta Cognitivo Conductual: Utilizando terapia cognitivo-conductual de vanguardia para ayudar a superar obstáculos y lograr una mente equilibrada.
– Conferencista, Profesor, Escritor e Investigador: Compartiendo conocimientos e ideas valiosas en eventos, capacitaciones y publicaciones para inspirar cambios positivos.
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Mi sólida formación académica incluye cuatro postgrados y un doctorado en Psicología Social, junto con certificaciones internacionales en Gestión, Liderazgo y Desarrollo Cognitivo Conductual. Mis contribuciones en el área son ampliamente reconocidas en cientos de clases, entrenamientos, conferencias y artículos publicados.
Coautor del libro “El Secreto del Coaching” y autor de “El Mapa No Es el Territorio, el Territorio Eres Tú” y “La Sociedad de la Dieta” (el primero de una trilogía sobre el comportamiento humano en la contemporaneidad – 05/2024).
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