What To do With It

Hello! Okay this is like the continuation of my TIL post at the end of January last last week. It's about happiness and I wanna talk more about it as promised. 

A few days ago, I came up with this thought: 

"Everyone wants happiness, but no one really know what to do with it"

Makes sense? Okay let me ask you a question. When was the last time you feel really really happy? I'm talking about "real" happiness. Not those "short" ones like when you taste a really great food, or when you managed to catch a bus, when you see an old friend, when you watched a funny video or read a funny story. I mean real, genuine happiness. Like when you see something for the first time, when you achieved a goal, when you do something you've always wanted to do, and so on.

For me it's probably the birth of my nephew Stefan last December. Because we've been expecting him for a long time! Haha. To see my sister giving birth to him, and both are safe and healthy, it really makes me happy. It's like a mix of anticipation and relief mixed together. I can't stop looking at him, think about him and so on. But then again, this feeling lingers away after a while.

I feel that happiness is such a weird thing because everyone wants it. They want to be happy, we don't want suffering. Yet I feel that we do so many things that make us unhappy. Things we should avoid doing, we do them. And when unhappiness arrives, we feel miserable, and we crave for more.

So yeah I came up with that thought. What do we do with happiness? Do we just show it to other people, share it with other people? But what do we really, truly do with it? Or do we just feel it and let it go away? Just like our thoughts and other emotions who come and go, like guests.

Perhaps we can never really grasp the happiness that we felt. Like everything in life, it is impermanent in nature. I suppose we just feel its presence and that sense of bliss. I once watched a Buddhist documentary in THIS Buddhist film fest back in 2012 titled Your Mind Is Bigger Than All The Supermarket In The World. It is a conversation between a monk from Sri Lanka and the film maker.

There's a quote which never leaves me behind. The film maker asked him, what is happiness? And his answer is that we feel happy when we, and our mind, get what they want. Unhappiness is the opposite. So yeah, maybe all that we can do with happiness is that sense of bliss to give us "what we want". Which makes sense because we all want it. And we can't do anything with it because it's just a feeling.

So I wonder if we can apply this to other emotions too. Like how we feel angry or disappointed when things don't work out the way we want them to be. We worry when we wait for something to happen. And well, do you realise that we can't really do anything with these emotions.

I suppose this is how we'll be free of suffering, when we are unbound from our emotions.

I know it sounds weird but... Maybe I no longer want happiness. And neither do I need sadness, anger, and so on. I hope that one day I can stop relying on emotions to justify my reality and life. That doesn't mean I will be an emotionless robot. I think we shouldn't be slaves to our emotions and feelings.

This is a really random thought. I hope you enjoy reading my insight! On this weird thing we all want.