Each of us needs to periodically revise our worldview, especially if there is a persistent feeling that “something is wrong”. Only hard work on yourself, paradoxically, leads to a happy life. Because there is just as much happiness around as you notice it and increase it.
The older sister (28 years old) cursed when I ate raspberries from the bush. Because raspberries are for jam. When winter comes – and how pleasant it will be to open a jar of homemade jam.
For some reason, she did not think about the fact that there is jam in the summer – also great. And picking berries almost blue from ripeness from the bush is a delight.
In fact, nothing was allowed to eat. Neither strawberries (jam!), Nor sea buckthorn (to dry and in compote), nor mushrooms (to salt).
It was my father’s summer cottage, which he bought and where he was very reluctant to go only because the child (me) needed fresh air (as well as lice, constant indigestion and ticks on the head).
Dad went out into the yard (aka vegetable garden), only to sunbathe. He didn’t care about jams, pickles and other horseradish with parsley – all this was sold in buckets at the bazaar.
But since the child (I) wanted raspberries from the bush, I had to make trouble with my sister. She could not calm down in any way that the reserves were under threat. She somehow did not live now, she always had plans for the distant future: berries for the winter, black caviar for the New Year.
This is an amazing character trait – the inability to have fun today . We need to postpone, store, prepare for that special moment when you can allow yourself a little joy. And, most importantly, prohibit others from enjoying themselves.
A friend told me that his aunt (as old as my sister) caught him, also at the dacha, when he ran home for some bun or candy, and said: “Stop hanging around!” And not that she was going to use it on the farm. To the question: “Why?” – she answered: “But there is nothing!” And made him sit in the room.
Good is bad.
My friend’s mother is panicky before every vacation. She sees earthquakes, floods, robberies, diseases. It’s also scary to leave the house – suddenly, for example, a fire. She does not trust her husband. He believes that this teetotaler will immediately get drunk, smoke – and, of course, fall asleep with a cigarette. Maybe even bring in someone to steal her curtains. Or whatever she has of value.
You can’t just go somewhere and have a good time there. For idleness and happiness one has to pay with anxiety.
I have a friend who, in all seriousness, utters such aphorisms:
– It can’t just be so good. Probably something will happen.
These statements unsettle me. I cannot understand what this is about. It seems to me that if you feel good now, then it will be even better. Because you absorb pleasure, and it, like a tan, sticks to your skin, it protects you from the difficulties of life.
I had a very severe depression, and at that time it also seemed to me that there would be happiness when … then I named the reason. Not now. You need a good reason to feel joy.
This syndrome has a name – “anhedonia”. And also “social agnosia”. Psychiatrists will beat me with Jung’s writings for using the term in vain, but Anhedonists are too beautiful and correct a name for people who spoil their lives every minute, forbidding them to have pleasure.
Recently, anhedonia has become so widespread that it is amazing.
You post a picture of yourself on the ocean on Facebook – and you immediately catch accusations that someone died, the plane crashed, new sanctions were introduced, tanks smashed the railroad, and so on. You personally and your shorts and towel and sunscreen are to blame for this.
People cling to these truly tragic events so that they distract them from joys, albeit small, but still. It seems that it has become fashionable to suffer, grieve and be afraid.
Honestly, I’m not scared.
There is always something frightening or disturbing going on in life . With other people, with whole countries, with your country, with your friends and your life. Often this makes it hard, and you worry and feel compassion, or you have the worst times, but this is how the world works.
There is no other concept of life. It will never end, prosperity will not fall on us suddenly and forever.
If you can have fun today, do it.
My friend’s father, who was deprived of the opportunity to make films in the USSR for twenty years, had huge debts. But whenever he borrowed money, the whole family went to the restaurant. And not even to have a tasty meal, but to feel that life is not only lack of money, melancholy, and vile Soviet censors. He was charged with this – and saved himself. (Debts, if anyone is interested, he later gave back.)
You see, we then remember not the bad, but the good . All the terrible is repressed, and the good suddenly flashes up in our memory and shines as if it had just been washed and polished. And we live only by these passages, and not by a series of worries and adversities.
While I was depressed, I was afraid to fly airplanes. Before fainting. Then I learned to do it again, but aerophobia passes long and painfully – due to habit.
And then one day I take my place, look out the window and understand that I am not afraid at all. Not fly, not crash, not die. Because I’m happy. And I have no objective reason for this. I didn’t write a novel, I didn’t get the Booker Prize for it, I didn’t come up with a cure for cancer, I didn’t have five children.
I’m just happy. I feel good. I love my life. I eat raspberries from a bush and go to rest from rest – and not because I have a lot of money, but because I have a desire.
The trick is that if you are happy, then it is not scary either to live or die.
