Happy Tradeoffs

It’s in the nature of thought that it never ceases to exist. In Happiness: The End, it would seem as though I’d found the track I wanted to follow. But it isn’t ever so simple, is it? The books I read somehow seem to have words that phrase my thoughts just right

The first roadblock I have found in the ‘happiness plan’ is sensitivity. It works in at least a couple of ways. On one hand, when I act with my own happiness as the key filter, I find it difficult to ignore the effect it has on other people. Do my actions make them unhappy? On the other hand, I am also in situations when others’ behaviour makes me unhappy but one or more constraints prevent me from doing anything about it. In both cases, I have to compromise.

When I was discussing this with D, I had to define what I meant by compromise since we were getting sidetracked by semantics. I defined compromise thus – if I cannot act/react the way I’d want to, because of constraints laid upon me, I call it a compromise. I then asked her how she deals with me, because she is the only person with whom I feel free to share my emotions with zero constraints. I was sure that she has had to compromise many a time on account of this. Her answer was that it is a compromise only if the constraints are laid down by another person. If she is making a choice that makes her happy, it is no longer a compromise.

Happiness through conscious choices, which account for one’s own levels of sensitivity. That’s doable when it comes to my own actions. But the world doesn’t care about my rules and will put me in situations where my reaction is a compromise. How does one justify the trade-offs to the self, and how does one retain objectivity? Does the trick lie in understanding the transience of that ‘unhappiness’ and not letting it become baggage that I carry around? Can I make a conscious choice of not letting something affect me, and if I keep doing that, will it take a toll on me? Still searching.