How to Be Happier

Ask yourself whether you are happy and you cease to be so. — John Stuart Mill

I am in quite a good mood. And only part of it stems from the fact that you’re reading this blog. Also, there is the residue of stomach happiness from eating ribs last night, but neither of those reasons are the real reason I’m happy.

The real reason I’m happy—well, I guess if you broke it down, you could say the reason for my happiness is achieved from the increased release of a particular neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the left prefrontal cortex; but that raises some rather philosophical debates on the existence of emotion.

So putting my brain’s biochemistry aside, the real reason I’m happy—actually, if you believe a thing cannot exist without it’s opposite to define it, you could say I’m happy because I’m not sad. But according to that logic, I’m also not sad because I’m happy, in which case we’re stuck in a chicken and the egg kind of thing. Except you can’t make a breakfast burrito out of the former.

From a standard, more practical analysis of my happiness, though, you could attribute it to the fact that I recently got a new video game, I received a very late birthday present, my ankle’s feeling better after rerolling it, I caught my reflection in the mirror this morning, or while sparring yesterday, I didn’t totally get my ass kicked.

But again, none of these are the real reason. They’re good reasons; they’re definitely contributing factors. But in truth, all of them are still ancillary reasons to the foundation block, the core pillar of cement that is supporting my happiness.

At this point, however, you, my reader, are in one of two states: excitedly scrolling the page to learn the ultimate cause of my happiness, or angrily scrolling the page, irritated at my insistence at stalling it out—and now you just want get on with life.

Well, if you thought it’d be as easy as scrolling to the last sentence and finding out there, you’re mistaken. For if you really want to know why I’m in such a great mood, you have to go back and click on the word “happy” in the second paragraph, fifth word in.

And to think, you could have saved yourself all that time.

But if you read all the way to this final sentence, then you clearly had time to waste. Just don’t tell Tock from The Phantom Tollbooth.

Happily,

jdt