For the writer Hermann Hesse, the need to be busy and to live in a state of compulsive pleasure, to do, rather than simply, gives rise to the drama that fuels today’s existential dissatisfaction. But German has an answer that, while it may seem obvious and simple, implies a better understanding, capable of changing our relationship with the world. The compulsive pursuit of pleasure can become a repeated dissatisfaction.
Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says we live in a liquid and consumer society that seeks to immediately meet material needs. This means that the products we consume sell out quickly, allowing our needs to never be met; we always want to consume more to feel complete.
- The great general discontent that we are living is particularly on a social level.
- We spend the day wishing for new things and as soon as we acquire them the desire is renewed.
- As a consumer society that we are.
- Any novelty gives us practically another desire.
“The physical, biological, natural agony of a body that is hungry, thirsty or cold, lasts little, very little, but the agony of the unsatisfied soul lasts a lifetime. -Federico García Lorca-
According to a study published in the journal Depression and Anxiety, desperately seeking the path to happiness could be a shortcut, with dramatic decline, to anxiety and depression. Happiness has become a goal in itself, rather than being a direct consequence of well-being. lived, or at least well-defined, life.
The direct link between making us happy and depression is because of how we get used to suppressing our feelings and not showing our vulnerability in any way.
We all deserve to make the most of our abilities and seize every opportunity to be happy, yet difficulties and bad times are part of the way, and denying the experience can be even more damaging than accepting it.
Negative emotions may be necessary to establish a transition period between an external negative stimulus and a healthy emotional recovery, these emotions cause loss of energy that stimulate us to think, it should be remembered that negative emotions also have their role, for example in the face of the death of a loved one, it is healthy to feel pain or sadness as a springboard to overcome this situation.
“Depression is a prison where you are both the prisoner and the cruel jailer” – Dorthy Rowe-
Quality of life depends not only on happiness, but also on what we do to be happy, if you don’t create goals that make sense of existence, if we don’t use our minds to the fullest, good feelings will inspire only a small part. of the potential we have.
After decades of studying the states in which people reach their full potential, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s research shows that people are happier when they reach a state of high concentration, which the author called “flow”.
This author, a doctor of neuroscience at Stanford University, has detected a paradox: work is more conducive than leisure to achieve what he calls a state of flux, which could be interpreted as happiness. The key is that, for many people, leisure is a time-out, and I work, on the contrary. Having clear goals, being able to manage them and receive feedback is essential to move.
“Human happiness is not usually achieved with great strokes of luck, which can happen many times, but with small things that happen every day. -Benjamin Franklin-