Happiness Requires Peace
Happiness Requires Peace
Are happiness and purpose interconnected?
Happiness is such an overloaded word, I’m not even sure what it means. For me these days, happiness is more about peace than it is about joy. I don’t think peace and purpose go together.
If it’s your internal purpose, the thing you most want to do, then sure, you’ll be happy doing it. But an externally inflicted purpose, like “society wants me to do X,” “I am the first son of the first son of this, so I should do Y,” or “I have this debt or burden I took on,” I don’t think it will make you happy.
I think a lot of us have this low-level pervasive feeling of anxiety. If you pay attention to your mind, sometimes you’re just running around doing your thing and you’re not feeling great, and you notice your mind is chattering and chattering about something. Maybe you can’t sit still…There’s this “nexting” thing where you’re sitting in one spot thinking about where you should be next.
It’s always the next thing, then the next thing, the next thing after that, then the next thing after that creating this pervasive anxiety.
It’s most obvious if you ever just sit down and try and do nothing, nothing. I mean nothing, I mean not read a book, I mean not listen to music, I mean literally just sit down and do nothing. You can’t do it, because there’s anxiety always trying to make you get up and go, get up and go, get up and go. I think it’s important just being aware the anxiety is making you unhappy. The anxiety is just a series of running thoughts.
How I combat anxiety: I don’t try and fight it, I just notice I’m anxious because of all these thoughts. I try to figure out, “Would I rather be having this thought right now, or would I rather have my peace?” Because as long as I have my thoughts, I can’t have my peace.
You’ll notice when I say happiness, I mean peace. When a lot of people say happiness, they mean joy or bliss, but I’ll take peace. [2]
A happy person isn’t someone who’s happy all the time.
It’s someone who effortlessly interprets events in such a way that they don’t lose their innate peace.
幸福需要内心的宁静
幸福与目标是否相互关联？
幸福是一个负荷极重的词语，我甚至不太确定它的真正含义。对我来说，现如今，幸福更多的是一种宁静，而非狂喜。我不认为宁静和目标是紧密相连的。
如果这是你的内在目标，即你最想做的事情，那么当然，你在做这件事的时候会感到幸福。但如果这是外部强加给你的目标，比如“社会希望我做某事”，或者“我是家族长子长孙，所以我应当做某事”，或者“我背负了某种债务或负担”，那么我并不认为这会让你幸福。
我认为我们很多人都有这种低水平弥漫的焦虑感。如果你留意自己的内心，有时候你只是日复一日地忙碌着，并没有感到很好，你会注意到自己的思绪不断地喋喋不休，也许你甚至无法静坐片刻……这种焦虑在你心中不断地催促着“下一步做什么”，你坐在一个地方，总是在想着下一个地方应该去哪里。
总是想着下一件事，然后是下下一件事，再然后是下下下一件事，这种无休止的想法不断地制造出弥漫的焦虑。
如果你曾尝试过静静坐下，什么也不做，你就会明白这种感受。我指的是什么也不做，是真的什么也不做，不是看书，不是听音乐，就是字面意义上什么也不做。你会发现自己很难做到，因为那种焦虑总是在推动你站起来、去做点什么。我认为，意识到这种焦虑正在让你不快乐非常重要。焦虑只是一连串不断运转的念头而已。
我对抗焦虑的方式是：我不会刻意去抗争它，我只是意识到，因为这些念头我感到焦虑。我试着去弄明白，“此刻我更愿意继续这些思绪，还是更愿意拥有内心的宁静？” 因为只要这些思绪不断，我就无法获得宁静。
你会注意到，当我提到幸福时，我指的是宁静。当很多人提到幸福时，他们说的是狂喜或极乐，但我更愿意选择宁静。 [2]
幸福的人并不是一直都感到幸福的人。
而是能够轻松地解释发生的事情，从而不丢失自己内在宁静的人。