Ever catch yourself saying “if only I had {insert here} then I will be happier”, or “only {insert here} can make my life feel complete”, and my favorite “I can’t live without {insert here}.” Now, often times we find ourselves obsessively wanting things that we believe will bring an end to all of our problems. Most of the time when we finally do attain that something we desire we realize how different it is from how we perceived it to be. Our anticipation of how the moment will play out seemed so much more exciting than what really did play out. Psychologist call this behavior as perceived happiness. Students of dharmic religion identify this as the ego that provokes attachments-the cause of all suffering.
Perceived Happiness
As humans we evolved with the ability to visualize scenarios in our minds before they play out. Men, in general are more equip with this ability due to their role as the hunter gatherer. Humans have developed this ability so strongly that they are capable of experiencing their vision by expecting certain senses and emotions.
Now this has certain evolutionary advantages which can be witnessed when a pack of wolves anticipate where their pray will run to so they can then trap it. Needless to say humans visualization ability is far beyond that of wolves. Unfortunately, in this hyperactive social media age we live in, our ability to live scenarios in our minds are causing drawbacks. What used to be a critical skill to survive is now causing major depressions for the 21st century human beings.
When we imagine how great life would be the coming summer when we are laying in a hammock at some beach in Hawaii we are perceiving happiness. It gives us overwhelming euphoria just thinking about it, but when we are actually experiencing it do we really experience the same euphoria? Probably not. We often are more enchanted with our imaginations than actually living it.
The real problem with perceived happiness occur when our expectations are not met thereby causing fear, anxiety, and depression. When we are infatuated with someone for example, we often idealize scenarios that is unlikely to occur causing us to experience a variety of emotional turmoil when we find out that our visions did not come true. At this age our social media encourages us to have such deformed views of reality and when true reality is realized it impacts our self-confidence. Many people today have abandoned hope and optimism due to the many perceived visions they’ve concocted that were broken.
Certainly this quality isn’t a burden. Our same ability to perceive scenarios in our mind is the same ability we use to solve the worlds hardest problems, invent the newest technologies, and predict future problems.
Experienced Happiness
Revolutionary to western cultures is the idea of experienced happiness. This philosophy has been emphasized by dharmic religions for thousands of years, Buddhism and Taoism are among the most popular. It is preached as the replacement of perceived happiness to avoid suffering.
The idea is through meditation we can train our minds to focus and control our expectations. After all you must admit that the happiest moments of your life came by surprise. When we control our expectations we are less susceptible to delusional thoughts which forces us to turn our point of view to true reality. With practice we can learn to accept this true reality and find that it too contains many beautiful things that is actually tangible.
Of-course, this is not the only purpose of meditation but rather just one of it’s many benefits. In fact, experienced happiness doesn’t have to arise from traditional meditation. Unlike the fluctuation of happiness that come from perceived happiness, experienced happiness is chosen. The individual simply decides that he/she is happy and he/she will obtain happiness. This requires redefining what happiness really is for the practice e.
Thoughts
Perceived happiness is great. However, to the person seeking true joy may not be able to benefit from it. Its a short term high that often has more drawbacks that is not worth the high. With that said it is still essential part of being human. Only after understanding its nature can we begin to extract the benefits that come from it and throw away the bad ones. On the other hand, everyone can benefit from experienced happiness. Its selfless nature, simplicity, and calm objective makes the student of the philosophy maintain it for a longer period of time. After all being happy more often isn’t such a bad deal.
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