But thats just contentness. I was hoping happiness was this ultimate daily high, equivalent to as if I was having sex all day.
Good God, man! If you figure out that feeling, let me know about it. :lol:
I think maybe your expectations are a bit too high. A high like that doesn’t last forever, but what you can get is a general feeling of contentness, and little glimpses of that high even on a daily basis, punctuated by days where you really acheive something and you soar. To generate a feeling of pride, self-esteem, benevolence (i.e. what you call contentedness) everday is no small feat. I’m not sure I’d modify it with “just”.
Its a struggle in the sense that theres a lot of failing when I’m working on a hard goal, and each failed attempt bruises the ego at least a little because I temporarily lose some of my certainty. Of course I keep working at it and eventually overcome the obstacle, but soon enough theres another failure. And the pattern continues. And when I accomplish a goal, I cant take it easy for very long to enjoy the success because being productive is what keeps me “happy”, so its right back to the grind.
Sophia has already pointed this out eloquently, but you may be beating yourself up a bit too much. Failure should only bruise your ego if you earned it. That is, if you were irrational some way in making the attempt. That is not the same as saying that you should have known you were going to fail, that is using omniscience as a standard. Maybe this is why it feels like a struggle. You might be accepting unearned guilt for failures.
As long as you’re being rational about it, just the mere process of learning, trying, failing (or suceeding) and regrouping, should in an of itself be a pleasuable experience. It is you in the process of exercising your rational faculty. It doesn’t mean you don’t experience all the various emotions associated with failure (such as regret, loss, etc.) but that your perspective is such that you realize those emotions are not the fundamental, and you rebound quickly.
If you don’t approach the effort with the right psychological mindset, then it can appear to you to be “a grind”. That is where stoicism comes from. For example you describe life in your para above as “a grind” most of the time, puncutated by “highs”, only when you succeed.
What instead if you thought of everything you do as an adventure? Even if it is something you’ve done a million times, it can still be an adventure. By adventure, I mean that it is not only the end, but the actual process of acheiving the end that is enjoyable.
You play baseball, huh? Isn’t every inning of every game “an adventure” to you? I was at a game on Sunday. Great game! Sunshine, 95degrees, out on the lawn. Early lead. 4 empty innings. Visitors come back from behind in the 8th and 9th to lead by 2 at the bottom of the ninth. Home team puts the tieing run on 2nd with no outs. Ground-out RBI puts the tie run on 3rd. Coach pulls his best pinch hitter, who pop flies just behind 3rd pinning the runner there. 2 outs. Bottom of the 9th. Tie run on 3rd. Crowd is screaming. The last batter strikes out. OOOh!!
Did I get you wound up with that description? Well, remember, it’s just “people playing a game, and they’re all going to die one day…” THe trick here I think is how to make more and more of your daily life adventure-ful. Aventure isn’t about new-ness. Its about you trying, you making an effort, you succeeding, and you failing, and trying again.
I have been acting a bit like a Stoic actually, not on purpose though. The problem consist of not having enough time or energy. I play baseball several days a week for an hour and then I work most days at a pizza place(pretty boring but pays the rent). By the time I get home theres just not much time or energy left for me to do anything. Maybe I’m bored with the never-changing routine. There’s not much I can change, however, because I want to continue progressing with baseball and also I need to pay my bills.
Instead of trying to put more things into your life, try to put more adventure into the things you already do. Even with the “chores” of daily life, you can make them something to enjoy. Yup, you gotta deliver pizzas to pay the bills. No getting around that. But you can insert stuff into that time as well. Extra time in the car? Try exploring some new music you haven’t heard before. Lull in the lunch rush? Try quizing your boss on all the elements it takes to run a small business. See? You don’t need more time to add more adventure into your life.
Do you think a woman would do the trick, if I fell in love? Is that the missing piece of the puzzle?
no, no, no, no, no. Nothing external will do the trick. This is an internal thing. External things are distractions to accomplishing this particular thing, remember that.
And no, I havent read Good Copy. What is it?
It’s a Rand story where there isn’t a “struggle” that her characters are dealing with. Where you aren’t apt to mistake Roark for a stoic (which he is not, but many yung-ins, including myself once, make that mistake). Where people are happy, and benevolent.