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Most lives are lived by default
21–30 of 138 posts
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#22I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it. In this case, it's suggesting happiness comes in part from questing to find major change X in your life that will change everything. But I think that's actually the cause of a lot of unhappiness. It's a perpetual "grass is always greener" situation. Say you go on…
> I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it.
Also, it is written by somebody who purports to understand happiness for a sizable fraction of people.
At least he causes happiness in a large number of people who laugh heartily at such a self-centered approach.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#23I believe that the way we perceive our lives depend on our conception of death. I've always believed that once we die, it's over and we are as unconscious as we were before our birth. Unfortunately, this belief made me see everything pointless to some extent. Regardless of how successful I am, in the end, there's nothing left. Regardless of the sacrifices I do, in the end, there's nothing left. I know that my life might change other people's life, but if in the end, if it doesn't matter for me, it doesn't matter for others either; a sum of 0s returns 0.
Since it is not a feeling I enjoy, I ended up living on a daily basis; Have I enjoyed my day, Did I really wanted to do that, What should I do to enjoy my time? I lived mostly in the present for several years, doing a job I enjoyed at the time, and enjoying my time outside as well. Anything that I didn't want to do right away wasn't worth doing. It got to the point where I was pushing away feelings just because I didn't like them, such as regrets or stress from late tasks.
It didn't pay that well. After a while, I had a lot of late bills (not that I couldn't pay, I just didn't want to do it right now), I wasn't looking forward to know what to do with my future, etc. The good thing I learned from that is looking forward for good feelings and investing myself in what I enjoy.-Turns out I had a promotion at my job, and I liked my new tasks, and since then, I've been studying at night to build a career from it.-I also learned to fix things up in time because when every thing works out well, when you have nothing due to anyone, you feel better, you feel freed from those responsabilities for the time being.
I also believe in balance, in the meaning that if you only have good things happening to you, they aren't actual good things, they are normal neutral things. You need sadness, bad things, to enjoy even more the good things happening. Just like peace doesn't mean anything to someone that doesn't know its counterpart.
Put this altogether, you end up with a range from the worst feeling you can have, to a middle, to the greatest feeling you can have. I chose to be near the middle. I don't enjoy having bad feelings, and I prefer to have a neutral life, with good enough feelings. I doesn't mean that I don't want to suffer, to go through rough times, it only means I know to which extent I can go on this range, at which point it's not worth it.
Ultimately, living by default or not is, in my vision and understanding, at which point you are ready to sacrifice things to maybe get better things on the other side. Am I ready to sacrifice my marriage to maybe find a better women? Am I ready to dump friendship to maybe get better? I like the place where I live enough, it could be better but do I really want to go through all this work to maybe find something better? I really don't mind living by default, as long as I don't suffer from it, and I currently don't. Maybe I'll have regrets later on, but regrets are not worth having, so I'll chase them away as good as I can.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#24I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it. In this case, it's suggesting happiness comes in part from questing to find major change X in your life that will change everything. But I think that's actually the cause of a lot of unhappiness. It's a perpetual "grass is always greener" situation. Say you go on…
I agree completely that happiness comes from within. And yet there is a duality that has always struck me as important, though hard to explain: it's easiest to be happy when you're striving toward a goal you believe in. But you need to keep your sense of self, your ego, non-attached to the outcome of the striving. That is, you need to invest yourself 100% into doing things that are important to you, but remain detach…
Agreed. The idea is to act as if the outcome of what you were working on was the most important thing in the world to you, but to place no value on the actual outcome itself.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#25At age 27 after working as a Software Engineer since graduating, I could see the writing on the wall. I was "Jamie" as described in this article.
I made a conscious decision right then to turn off the "Life autopilot switch" as I call it.
I quit my good job, sold all my stuff, and spent 2 years driving 65,000km from Alaska to Argentina in my little 2 door Jeep. It was a life changing experience, and I was shocked when I visited my old workplace afterwards to see the same people, doing the same things, with the same blank expressions on their faces.
http://theroadchoseme.com is my blog of the entire journey.
I'm so passionate about helping and encouraging others to do something similar, I created http://wikioverland.org as a resource for people wanting to travel in this way. I also give presentations and talks about what I've done, and will be doing more of it shortly.
I am currently aware of 5 couples driving the Pan-American highway who directly say I gave them the courage to do it. I have never had a better feeling in my entire life.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#26I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it. In this case, it's suggesting happiness comes in part from questing to find major change X in your life that will change everything. But I think that's actually the cause of a lot of unhappiness. It's a perpetual "grass is always greener" situation. Say you go on…
After graduating with an engineering degree in a field I enjoy, and taking my first job, I soon began asking myself what's next. I grew up alongside many kids whose parents funneled them into the typical "dream careers": doctor, lawyer, finance (and other people who got there on their own). After quickly hitting my head on the (relatively low) glass ceiling, I wondered if I hadn't missed out on huge opportunities in life.
I reconnected with one of these friends, and he told me his life wasn't perfect. He hadn't reached some state of perpetual bliss that I'd imagined. And he envied that I got to work on creative problems that provided constant challenge. Then he paid for lunch and drove off in his Porsche. If everyone can be happy or unhappy regardless of material things (as long as their basic needs are met), is it better to be rich and happy rather than middle-class and happy?
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#27I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it. In this case, it's suggesting happiness comes in part from questing to find major change X in your life that will change everything. But I think that's actually the cause of a lot of unhappiness. It's a perpetual "grass is always greener" situation. Say you go on…
Are we reading the same post? I think you've missed the point entirely, or you made a conscious decision to ignore everything he wrote just so you could respond critically.
He says nothing about trying to find the best of everything or making sure to squeeze every ounce of happiness out of every decision you make. He's saying people who are unhappy should stop and think about whether or not they're pursuing things that might make them happy in the major aspects of their lives (location, career, friends, hobbies, etc.).
I don't buy into your BS about "learning to be happy with what you have" because it glosses over the whole "what you have" part, which is the crux of the issue. That's like asking miserable people "Have you tried being happy instead of being unhappy?" Brilliant. I'm sure you'll be a top contender for the Nobel Happiness Prize this year.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#28In my opinion unrealized happiness is not equal to grief.
Grief is a negative factor that directly impacts your life, like your car breaking down, or dreading going home to your spouse.
Grief can be the lack of free time or the abundance of it.
Grief is not I could be x units of happiness happier if I moved to California, therefore I am x units of happy less than I could potentially be.
I think most people know when something is missing in their life. They know if they HATE going to their job. They know if they HATE their neighborhood. In those cases, by all means seeks something better.
Basically this is the same argument has the "I want the best of everything" articles and the 50 dollar utensils. Many people pointed out you don't need the best or the worst you need good enough. What good enough is, is going to change from person to person. However I think we all have a pretty good idea about what good enough (both materialistically, and philosophically).
Aristotle was right, in my opinion.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#29I think the post, generally, is accurate, but the author is giving a little too much slack to those who, according to him/her, don't live by default. For example, you could argue that Picasso "lived by default"; his father was a painter, and he painted from very early in his life. So even though he never made a concieted effort to escape the normal path of his life, he was still succesfu l by practically any measure.
Re: Most lives are lived by default
#30The scariest thing in being happy is how much of our everyday lives turn into meaningless pile of deprecated trade-offs.
Things that you thought meant something for you actually don't. Things that you thought you'd keep for life actually turn out to be nonimportant. People you considered close were just vehicles for you: you gave them that love you didn't know how to give to yourself. And finally, things that you so cunningly shielded from your gaze for years begin to pop up and become unavoidable challenges.
That is because you can only be happy when you do things for the right reasons. Otherwise you just think you're happy and yet you spend your time trying to fill in gaps in yourself and your life, gaps that you don't know how to love. In other words, you're sitting on the passenger's seat yourself and letting what you think other people will think of you drive your life.
Go stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself if you're happy. Are you so happy that you wouldn't want to change anything in your life? Are you so happy that while you might certainly want to change some things you would still be perfectly content should those things actually never change? Ask yourself if there's some part of yourself that you don't love one hundred percent? Not 99, but 100? Ask yourself if you see too much fat, a body too skinny, or a person too unpopular and rejected, or someone who can't steer away from too many bad habits? Or do you see a person with weaknesses yet completely accept him/her just the way s/he is?
I'm not entirely happy myself but there have been, and there are, occasional moments when I am 100% happy.
It's those moments when I wouldn't replace a single bit of myself, whether it's hemorrhoids, feelings of guilt, or the history of how I've lived.