Happiness (two kinds of ice cream!)
Mood: busy
Posted on 2007-12-07 15:28:00
Tags: essay happiness
Words: 229

A common trap to fall in is to assume that you will be happier and your life significantly better after event X happens. ("If I could just get that promotion...", "If I only had a puppy..", etc.) I've always tried to not do this because it leads to not trying to either make things better or be happy with where you are in life. There's always one more goal over the horizon that will finally make you happier. I've been reading The Happiness Project for a while and in a post today she linked to an article that articulated this point nicely.

At the same time, the truth is that sometimes big events do make you happier. I'm, say, 50% happier now than when we were living in Maryland, both for job and people reasons. I guess the difference is that it was a really big change, and that I didn't just give up on "being happy" while we were up there.

I guess I've been thinking about this some because of our discussions about getting a PlayStation 3. (mostly for Rock Band) Money aside, I was pretty reluctant for a little while because it has a very rich-kid or yuppie vibe around it. (to me anyway) But honestly, it's just a stupid video game system, it's not a reflection of my life or anything similarly out of proportion.

6 comments

Comment from brittongregory:
2007-12-07T16:26:08+00:00
Aren't they releasing Rock Band for PS2 on Dec. 11?

Comment from destroyerj:
2007-12-07T16:27:16+00:00
Downloadable content, my friend, downloadable content.

Comment from brittongregory:
2007-12-07T16:55:09+00:00
/facepalm

Of course.

Comment from gregstoll:
2007-12-07T16:28:05+00:00
They are, but you can't get any of the downloadable content, which as you can see is already 20 or 30 songs.

Comment from djedi:
2007-12-07T17:32:57+00:00
I totally agree with this and am prone to that myself...maybe we all are.

But this is why even though we thought we'd look for a house pretty quickly, we moved into a nice apartment instead of a ghetto cheap one and why we unboxed everything and moved in completely, even decorating the place up. Even if we're only there 6 months, we are living there now. I find that "once X happens, then I"ll Y" to be very dangerous if it isn't for very specific reasons...and even then it can make you accept unhappiness now as a tradeoff for unhappiness later. This isn't always bad (putting time in as a low-level employee to rise to management some day), but is dangerous.

Comment from djedi:
2007-12-07T17:33:54+00:00
And yeah, several events have made me happier. You moving to Austin, us moving back to Austin, etc. But the extra happiness is seldom about stuff or events, it's about people for me I've found.

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