By Xenia S. Estrella
Is happiness a choice? Absolutely; even if sometimes you may have to think about that for a while.
The Irish Times and New York Times media companies very recently featured an article by Adam Grant, saying, the “sense of joyless aimlessness”, that the pandemic brings about in people, “can dull your motivation and focus – and it may be the dominant emotion of 2021”. How sad it is to think that people are not able to adapt to the times and that so many allow themselves to fall into a “sense of joyless aimlessness”, called, “Languishing”.
As it was metaphorically described, “languishing is the neglected middle child of mental health… You don’t have symptoms of mental illness, but you’re not the picture of mental health either. You’re not functioning at full capacity. Languishing dulls your motivation, disrupts your ability to focus… It appears to be more common than major depression…”
Life is evidently worth living no matter what predicament you may find yourself in. There is supposedly no reason to think otherwise but for a person who just “gets by”, or who lives a lackluster life; for someone who struggles with each day, say, working as necessary but feeling drained all the time, this truth may seem a little uncertain.
Why does this happen?
I was hearing mass on TV the other day and Fr. Tito Caluag (Kapamilya Daily Mass) talked about Fr. Hans Khüng, a Swiss Catholic priest, theologian and author. According to the latter, there are 3 important things to possess that are necessary to live a meaningful life:
- Man needs something to live on;
- Man needs something to live for, and;
- Man needs something to die for.
Something To Live On
Well, du-uh, the basic necessities in life give meaning to day-to-day activities, knowing that there is always a tomorrow that you look forward to. A tomorrow where you won’t worry about hunger, thirst and shelter. If ‘something to live on’ were the only factor to be considered in happiness (and if a pandemic weren’t a reality in this lifetime), then maybe more people would be seen with sunny dispositions all around the world. In reality, whether or not every adult is complete with the basic necessities in life, satisfying one’s physical needs can only take you so far in this world.
Something To Live For
You may live for others, as a philanthropist. You live for a certain level of success, if you’re in business. You live to “make love, not war”, if you’re a hippie. These reasons keep you going in life so you can make an impact while you’re here. Is it enough to be living for something, though? Beware. If one’s insatiable spirit eventually takes over and looks for something else that will satisfy (and this is very likely to happen), possession of ‘something to live for’ (whether it be another person or thing), alone, cannot quench the need for lasting peace of mind and happiness.
Something To Die For
Passion fires up the drive to live, in people; whether or not the same passion kills them as they try to achieve goals. When man develops an intense desire to reach an objective, expect consistent action to follow from this one who’s geared towards success but is ready to try again, in case of failures. Despite hardships, disappointments and losses, one who has something to die for is motivated and is consistently on his toes. What else is there to expect if you can already see, taste and almost touch your dreams, in your mind?
Whether or not it is right to pursue particular passions is another story, but sticking to our topic on hand, the third element of “something to die for”, completes the three possessions needed to be completely happy. Having one or two can possibly keep you content for a while. Genuine happiness though, that can sustain you even when the whole world sucks, needs all three to be possible.
Listless and sluggish may be common traits that can be used to describe people in a pandemic, but please remember that everyone has a choice to either grow in the virtue of hope and see their lives as having a purpose, or fall into the complication of languishment because life is quite harder nowadays.
Is happiness a choice? Yes. Find your something to live on, your something to live for and your something to die for, now.
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If you’re feeling, ‘blah’, as you go through each day, schedule a complimentary discovery session with Xenia, and drive those blues away. https://calendly.com/xeniae/discovery