🌈 The full spectrum
An exploration on how to interpret happiness
The moving goalpost. The burden of human existence and the gift that keeps on giving. That is what our hopes and dreams ultimately come down to.
Most emotions are being created in the difference between expectation and reality. Hope, fear, luck, surprise, anger, hate. All coming from experiencing a world that just doesn't quite fit what we want or expect. Even colloquially happiness is understood as bringing about the achievement of matching reality to one’s expectation of it.
Our lives are complex multi-variant equations. But to an uncontemplated mind what makes a person feel something is the derivative. The perceived change at any point in time. Not the current position one inhabits.
There are only a handful of emotions that I perceive independent of the derivative. Independent of the expectation and change. Love, gratitude, awe. All of them can be purely felt with focused attention. By seeing what the world is independent of my expectations of it. Grappling with its complexity. The appreciation of hardship. The beauty of a crying baby. The cute embarrassment of one's complement reflected in the red cheeks of another. I aim to strive for recognizing those feelings and find those in others. While being aware that striving is not what I will end.
Because wanting is endless. I don't know what I am going to want tomorrow. So happiness shall not be dependent on it. Especially as truly knowing what one wants is hard. And assuming one knows what one will want in the future is hybris. An equation of the goals we achieve or not, the changing interests and worries, the evolving ideas about us and the world around us. All to finally be aimed at bringing about an ephemeral state envisioned to be happiness.
For creating companionship in a so uncertain world, people need to decide to lean either into faith or acceptance. How shall friends and loved ones commit to one another when one hasn’t even made up one’s mind? To quote Ryan Gosling from the notebook: “god dammit, what do you want?”
By choosing faith one gives into the illusion of stability. Hoping that it will not change. Promising each other what one doesn't know.
By choosing acceptance one straps into the seat and commits to the ride. Being fine with any volatile outcome.
I choose acceptance. Cause one thing I know for sure. And that is that I am going to surround myself with people that are bottomless pits of surprises. That don’t pretend that they understand themselves nor reality but strive to explore it with every new day. Not constraint by a definition but embracing uncertainty. Endlessly curious about the world. Students. Idealists. Visionaries. That burn for making the world a better place without burning up in their pursuit. Thinking big but happy if it all ends up being just a small dent in the grand scheme of existence. Pragmatists at their core.
Because in a complex misunderstood world, there are no simple solutions. Though, a plethora of complexity to explore and get awestruck by. People that can sit down with you to philosophise and explore reality in discourse. To stand up in the next moment and fully lose themselves to the overwhelming emotions of its celebrations. Enthralled so completely in a moment that it might as well be the only one that will ever matter. Loving so deeply, it may be mistaken for delusion.
Because they absorb the world like kids. Converse about it like scientists. Tinker with it like engineers. Conceptualise it like theorists. Create it anew like artists. Emotionally in touch with themselves and others. While embracing their nature as part of nature.
People that are not scared of being the full spectrum. That escape any definition. They drift in the river of time looking lost. But they are just untethered. Unbeknownst to observers they are floating effortlessly on a stream of experiences. Playing with the flow. Taking deep breaths and diving in. Riding the undercurrent to be shot back out into the next uncertainty.
Because this is the kind of person I would like to be. And if there is ever a definition that I would strive to live up to then it would be this one: Being full spectrum.
