Happiness is overrated. In my mind, the idea of pursuing a happy life is signing a contract with yourself to guarantee the exact opposite result. By definition, if you feel the need to pursue something, you do not currently have it, so seeking happiness seems counterintuitive. Not to mention that solely pursuing happiness may have some detrimental effects.
As a computer science student intending to make this subject the crux of my full-time career, the question of "Does programming make me happy?" has been mulled over on more than one occasion, especially when studying for a particularly difficult exam or debugging an elusive problem. And honestly, I can't say with confidence that it consistently makes me happy. So then, why do I do it? In fact, many of my friends have come to me questioning how I can work for so many hours a day without hesitating. And if this work doesn't always make me happy, how can I sustain myself long-term?
We've all heard the trope, "Do what you love, so you won't have to work a day in your life." I believe this is a dangerous mindset to instill in future generations. There's not a single job where one will enjoy every single waking minute while doing it. Each job is riddled with logistics or housekeeping work just to get to the moments where it is actually enjoyable or meaningful. In the tech world, there are numerous meetings and corporate bureaucracy to navigate, many of which are counterproductive.
Even in a startup environment, the requirement of meetings does not disappear, not to mention that if a last-minute issue springs up, it's all hands on deck. No one cares what time of day it is or what else you have on your plate. It's the collective burden of the entire team to resolve the issue. If you work at a startup to seek happiness, you're probably in the wrong place. Seeking to build anything impactful is an arduous process, so to maintain your motivation and stamina through this journey, we need something more profound than happiness.
Happiness is often associated with the premise that one must constantly be in a state of exultation, which can result in unrealistic expectations. For example, we watch many movies and TV shows where the protagonist is happy after finally completing their mission, and then the movie ends. We then conflate this with our own lives. As a result, we can become disillusioned and disappointed when our emotions inevitably fluctuate. Happiness is a fleeting emotion heavily influenced by many factors out of our control, whether it's how others treat us, the current state of the economy, or what's happening around the globe.
I've come to realize that, rather than happiness, contentment is more worthy of my time and effort. While the Oxford dictionary does define it as "a state of happiness and satisfaction," I prefer to describe it as a feeling where one doesn't necessarily require the elated feeling of happiness but settles for a sense of mental and emotional stability. Here, one is okay with feeling just "okay."
You're working towards something in life, but rather than hinging your happiness on reaching that goal, the opportunity to simply partake in the journey is enough to satisfy you or to make you "content." In this state, emotions aren't turbulent; there will be inevitable peaks and troughs of both joy and disappointment; however, contentment is enough to keep things in perspective and not allow those feelings to overwhelm you.
Contentment stems from a place of mental consistency, where you're in control of your emotions, with a sense of clarity imbued into each day. It's a fundamental sense of belonging, peace, and tranquility in this hectic world. Happiness is usually surface level, while contentment is a deep, visceral feeling.
It's okay to have desires/goals in your life, but contentment is a state where you have moments throughout each day where you live in the present, not some hypothetical tomorrow or the unalterable past. Fundamentally, what makes me content is growing as a person each and every day, no matter how little. It could be intellectually, physically, or emotionally. Learning new concepts/ideas and connecting with others are the pillars that help me achieve this.
Naturally, catching up with my friends, meeting new people, or finally understanding some concept I've been struggling with for days to wrap my mind around all instill short-term joy in me. More importantly, they all give me purpose and meaning. The feeling of fulfillment transcends any intoxication that happiness could bring.
I'm not saying to boycott happiness or strive to remove it from your life, nor do I agree with Deadpool when he says, "Life is an endless series of train-wrecks with only brief, commercial-like breaks of happiness." Happiness doesn't need to be elusive. Emotions—perhaps happiness or something more negative—will always be by-products of pursuing your ambitions and goals. That's just a matter of fact. Happiness and contentment can coexist and even reinforce each other. However, my opinion is that your life's fulfillment shouldn't be contingent on happiness. That hinders your ability to cope with the inevitable cornucopia of other emotions bound to be thrown your way, which is detrimental in the long term. Embrace the joyous moments and share them with others when you can, but that shouldn't be the end all, be all reason you do the things you do.
I like to think of emotions as the north star, not the destination of your voyage; they're imperative in navigating you in the right direction. If your pursuit of contentment results in some happiness along the way, you're probably doing something right. On the other hand, if your life is peppered with long stretches of misery, you may need to re-evaluate your strategy. Emotions are merely a call to action, nothing more. Allowing yourself to be overly elated during the happy moments will only make the absence of happiness much more miserable, which impedes your journey in the long term.
Another factor to consider is the severity at which you experience your emotions. When Devi's therapist from Never Have I Ever told her, "You feel a lot, which means sometimes you're going to hurt a lot, but it also means that you're gonna live a life that is emotionally rich and really beautiful." I was left wondering if life is more beautiful when the magnitude of your emotions is so much greater. It's a double-edged sword; on the one hand, you're able to experience the full spectrum of emotions very vividly, but on the other, you're more susceptible to the negative ones. It's not a trade-off that's worth it for me. Having slightly muted emotions is a small price for a less tempestuous life. Because contentment isn't a spectrum, but rather a state of mind, it's easier to maintain and control.
When reading about contentment, some may claim I'm just recoining the term "true happiness." While contentment makes intuitive sense to me, "true happiness" yields more questions. I understand the sentiment this term stems from, but personally, it doesn't seem genuinely representative of the idea it's attempting to encompass. When someone achieves "true happiness," does that mean they're expected to be constantly jubilant? What role will other emotions play in their lives?
The beauty of realigning our mission to seek contentment rather than "true happiness" is that it still allows us to experience all emotions. Most importantly, it doesn't invalidate the negative moments. In fact, still being able to experience negative emotions is a critical aspect of being human, at least one that seeks to foster empathic connections with others. That's what separates us from Chat GPT. For example, if a friend comes to you for support after a death of a loved one, being happy, whether it's "true" or not, isn't going to help them. Instead, they need empathy and for you to genuinely put yourself in their shoes and feel the pain they're currently feeling. They need to feel understood, loved, and supported. Any attempt to make them happy at that moment would be a disservice, hindering their ability to healthily process their emotions.
Some of my most meaningful or transformative conversations with my friends were ones where one of us was despondent about something that really hurt us. Neither of us was happy at that moment, but we didn't need happiness. Having a friend with whom you can share some of the emotional burden is far more important than a friend who always makes you happy.
It seems inappropriate to group moments like this under "true happiness," yet they're so significant in shaping our relationships and making us who we are. Anyone that hasn't had the privilege of being sad and having a shoulder to cry on is missing out on a defining facet of the human condition.
At the end of the day, hanging out with my friends does make me happy; however, that's just the by-product of the deeper connection I've had the privilege of enriching with them. The sense of belonging and contentment that my friends give me means so much more than any feeling of happiness. The people that I've allowed to grow closest to me are the ones that make me a better human being and hopefully the ones for which I can do the same.
Beyond disappointment or sadness, other emotions, such as frustration, are also valuable and shouldn't be dismissed. Frustration is an indication that something challenging is being sought after. For example, whenever I'm struggling to learn something new, I'm often submerged in frustration as the new topic is just not making sense. But in my mind, frustration simply means you're going in the right direction: towards the challenges, not shying away from them. Frustration is your mind and body rallying their resources, stoutly devoting them to the problem at hand, if you choose to look at it that way. A life without frustration is a very bland one indeed.
Seeking contentment rather than happiness also grants much more clarity in other aspects of life. The reason I can work on the projects that I take on for long stretches throughout the day and not feel burnt out in the slightest isn't that this work makes me happy per se. Instead, it gives me meaning. It gives me a problem to solve. It gives me a mission. There are days when I may not find a reason to laugh or smile, maybe because I've just been so engrossed in whatever I've been working on, whether it's school or personal. However, that doesn't mean I regret or wish to avoid those days. As long as I'm learning new ideas and growing to be a better person, I can go to bed each night with peace resonating through my body.
I recently picked up rock climbing, and while it is an enjoyable experience, I wouldn't say I'm happy every moment I'm on the wall navigating the difficult routes. It's an engaging activity that taxes my body, along with my mind, requiring me to approach problems in a fundamentally different way than most other problems in life. Sure, after I finally solve a route that has taken all feeling from my forearms and chunks of skin from my hands, you'll see me smiling with joy, especially when I get to share it with the friends that I'm there with. However, I let that feeling fade away quickly as I move on to tackle the next challenge with a clear mind and no anchoring bias from my previous triumph. The contentment I feel in knowing the Sourish leaving the gym is just a little bit stronger and better than the one that entered is what satiates my soul, not the happiness. And this feeling is compounded when I look back to when I started in June of last year and see all the progress I've made as a climber.
Starting this blog was something that pushed me out of my comfort zone. I am still trying to figure out who my target audience is and how many people will find my thoughts and opinions insightful. However, the sense of contentment I get from writing an article I'm proud of is beyond happiness. It's a moment when I walk away having learned something new about myself.
Happiness, like all other emotions, plays a significant role in our lives. But happiness, or even this so-called "true happiness," are merely red herrings. It's much more fruitful to recoin the term to "contentment" to avoid confusing it with trivial joy. We don't want to forget or dismiss the moments when happiness was nowhere to be found but still have been watersheds in our lives.
I acknowledge that this paradigm probably won't be for everyone. My only goal with this article is to make the reader delve deeper into the role that happiness plays in their lives and see if there is potentially a more visceral emotion they're missing out on. Even if, after some mulling, you vehemently disagree with me and reaffirm your belief that happiness yields a fulfilling life, not contentment, I've achieved my goal of making you ponder. Reassessing the role of our emotions in our day-to-day life is a worthwhile endeavor for all people, so I hope I've been able to help with that.