Seek content-ness, not happiness. Happiness comes later.
In my early-twenties, I kept thinking that I always wanted happiness, and if I wasn't then something was wrong. I later realized that it was the pursuit of something that I could never attain that was draining and I realized that was the wrong path. I cannot attain perfection. So I decided to look for a better life-path that I could sustain, feel comfortable, and be content for long periods of time. Happiness comes later, naturally almost. It comes in small packets sometimes. Sometimes I don't even notice.
It's a concept that I read once in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, where the grandmother did not want to go into this box and see the world, because if she saw things she wanted but couldn't attain, she'd be unhappier than she currently was. This concept can be explained further with the parable of the fisherman and the businessman. I also think this is one of the ideas behind the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus", which took me years to understand.
Showing us what we don't have makes us question and think less of ourselves. It's the same mechanism that can lead to lower mood after seeing everyone's carefully curated lives on social media. Everyone around me is happy all the time, why aren't I?
Once you're concious of that bias, it becomes a bit easier to weather, but also uncomfortable in a different way. Personally, we want to share pics of our baby smiling with our friends, but will that make them feel worse when their baby cries for hours? We've been sharing experiences more openly with new parent friends so they understand it's not all rainbows all the time, and have been grateful for others who have done the same to us and reassured us that everyone's taking the bad with the good.
In my early-twenties, I kept thinking that I always wanted happiness, and if I wasn't then something was wrong. I later realized that it was the pursuit of something that I could never attain that was draining and I realized that was the wrong path. I cannot attain perfection. So I decided to look for a better life-path that I could sustain, feel comfortable, and be content for long periods of time. Happiness comes later, naturally almost. It comes in small packets sometimes. Sometimes I don't even notice.
It's a concept that I read once in Ray Bradbury's Dandelion Wine, where the grandmother did not want to go into this box and see the world, because if she saw things she wanted but couldn't attain, she'd be unhappier than she currently was. This concept can be explained further with the parable of the fisherman and the businessman. I also think this is one of the ideas behind the movie "Mr. Holland's Opus", which took me years to understand.