Why happiness?

[venusofthenorth]

I'm 23 years old and I'm currently not depressed, but I've always had issues with other people and since I was a teenager I've remained moody and prone to depression. I feel like these are natural feelings in a person who's been bullied her entire life, poor compared to Swedish classmates and unemployed for the last four years. So far I've made it by disregarding everything that isn't pulling me forward, my mood and my feelings included, which sure enough made it worse for a while but still got me going to whatever job I had and kept me out of bed. I've been thinking a lot about what health and wellbeing means and why it matters. Technically speaking the biggest issue I have with my moodiness is that I'm occasionally less than enthusiastic having people around. I feel like people concern themselves to greater extent being able to ignore my feelings rather than honestly wanting me to feel better. And even if I did feel better or got happier, I feel like people wouldn't approve of things that make me happy, like people wouldn't support or understand what happiness means to me and that they wouldn't value my happiness even if I found it. I feel like there's no point to being happy if it's not particularly important to anyone.

[Hidden]

Hi. I believe I know that feeling. I do want to point out that you are a person. And the most important I might add in regards to your own feelings. when people are mean to you, imagine it bouncing off you like water off a duck's back and say "eh" or "whatever" while flipping your hair or looking at your nails. I hope this helps somehow. Good luck!

[venusofthenorth in reply to Hidden]

I'm grateful you'd like to help, but I feel like maybe you're missing my point a bit. I'm not the most important person in the world (the most important people in the world are those we think the least of) happiness in and of itself, especially individual happiness isn't particularly important at all (I have a very long list of actually important thing) I posted this as a discussion of how we feel about happiness and WHY we place value on those feelings when they're really not necessary at all.

[Agora1]

If you aren't happy venus, then no one is happy. And if no one is happy, than it's time

to make yourself happy. Love yourself first and foremost. You are given but one life.

Do the things that mean the most to you, that have purpose. Make a difference in your life.

It is not a selfish thing to do but a loving one. xx

[venusofthenorth in reply to Agora1]

You realize that nobody matters at all? The people who "made a difference" in the world were enabled by a dozen victims at a time paving the way for powerful prophets, handsome heroes and glorified bullies to take credit off of somebody's else's hard work centuries beforehand.

[venusofthenorth]

Are you telling me this to convince me you have a point or are you persuading yourself really?

[Agora1 in reply to venusofthenorth]

I already proved to myself and the world that my choices in life made a difference.

And that is most important to me. xx

[FearIsALiar]

Are you from Sweden? 🇸🇪

I am sorry you’ve been through such a difficult time. I get very moody at times too and sometimes get snappy and I don’t mean to 😣

[venusofthenorth in reply to FearIsALiar]

I live in Sweden. Those feelings are sort of what I'm talking about. You have 'em, I have 'em, everybody has 'em yet we talk about them as if it was a grand tragedy of existence that YOU IN PARTICULAR isn't happy ALL THE TIME.

[FearIsALiar in reply to venusofthenorth]

I’ve always wanted to visit sweden.

But yeah, everyone has those feelings. It is normal. Of course I am not happy ALL THE TIME. But I can choose to be grateful.

[venusofthenorth in reply to FearIsALiar]

I'm happy you're content with gratitude. I'm more of an attitude kind of person, really. I feel like gratitude is just something we want people to feel so that there's greater lengths of time before they hold us responsible for our shitty behavior, like gratitude's an excuse to let the entire world be less than ideal when there really are functional solutions to practical problems and actually good behavior to everyone, people included. That's just me, though.