Thursday, June 3, 2010

Noticing the happy person in your body

I have been told by three different people in the last month how happy I’m looking, and by the cleaner at work that I’m looking healthy (which, obviously, I assumed meant fat) The strange thing is, I hadn't noticed feeling particularly happy. I'm not unhappy at the moment, but I do have my usual background stress buzzing away in my head. And the propensity to overthink anything that could make me spontaneously happy hasn’t gone anywhere, either.

Which got me thinking about the bizarreness of not realising you’re happy, and then on to the nature of personality. How we feel about life is determined almost entirely by our own personality type with very little to do with external circumstances. Whether it’s chemical or spiritual or genetic, the point is the whole world is filtered and adapted so much by the kind of person we are that what we perceive often bears no resemblance to what others perceive. Think of the boyfriends you’ve had who you thought were fantastically wonderful to the utter disbelief of your friends.

And in the case of a depressed or judgemental person, or a bully, that personality type is abusing the experiencer within it as much as it is abusing others. It is the personality that makes us unhappy. So we are removed from our personalities; like they are behaviours and patterns and filters that float about out there annoying us about ourselves, or annoying us in other people.

And the experiencer is always the same. Simunye, the Hindus are right.

1 comment:

  1. This reminds me of the conversation we had about happiness and how important unhappiness is to make you truly appreciate happiness. Somehow the realisation of our happiness is elusive. It's a tricky little fucker (Am I allowed to say that on your blog?) :P

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