Happiness as a Choice

I both like this idea and I don't. I believe it and I do not. I have always been on the fence about this because I believe that imparting the grand wisdom of "choose happiness" or "just decide to be happy" is absolute bullshit to the point of being damaging. And it is! If you don't fully understand it, it's a damaging thing to say. Ever heard of toxic positivity? It sounds like someone telling you to "just be happy." It's toxic! Most of the time.

When people say, "just be happy" they actually need to be explaining themselves because no, if you are sad, hurt, or angry, choosing happiness in that moment is completely out of the question and might actually lead to bottling up emotions or otherwise shoving them down so far you no longer "feel" them. What they actually mean is, "let this pass through you and do not hold on." That is choosing happiness. It's not about flipping a switch and just deciding to not be sad. It's about letting yourself process so that you can let go. This will inevitably lead to a sense of peace that we can call happiness for the sake of the argument.

When it comes to mental health issues; however, things get a little more dicey. What people don't understand is that depression is a complete depletion of energy. ENERGY. You no longer have the energy to make decisions let alone think about them enough to decide on anything at all. So telling someone with an energy depletion to "be happy" is like giving CPR to a fish. There's absolutely no connect there. A fish needs water, not the oxygen found in the air, the oxygen found in water. Before a depressed individual can even begin thinking about choosing anything close to an emotion, let alone happiness, they need their energy back. They need to be put back in the water.

Furthermore, inside depression, your neurodivergent brain has no interest in happiness or any emotion for that matter. It just wants to shut down and turn off. Because it needs energy, so it's trying to save energy. So, it's not necessarily sadness that is swallowing the victim of depression, it is a complete lack of energy keeping them from making decisions and doing something about it. You just have to ride it out. Try your best, and wait. Do not ever tell someone inside of depression or any other mental health episode to "choose happiness." Don't you think that if they could, they would? Do not be a toxic positivity, fucking idiot.

But happiness is a choice.

It just doesn't work immediately, unless you are doing the work alongside it. Say you've been rejected and it's making you feel sad. Choosing happiness entails you allowing this sadness to pass through you in a way where it is teaching you things. You can see it, you can feel it, and now you can let it go. That's a lot of steps encompassing this "choice" for happiness. You can't just snap your fingers and decide to be happy. You need to want it, you need to work for it, and then you can arrive there.

Choosing to be happy looks like putting in the work to get there naturally. If you are someone who feels a negative emotion and are then able to just switch it off? This is not choosing happiness. It's the opposite really. Instead, you have made a home inside your heart for this negative emotion where it can be locked away and unfelt. Until it boils over, of course. And it will.

To turn happiness into a choice you are making consciously is to keep your heart open so that any unwanted energy can pass through without settling. It is the choice to be unafraid of negative emotions and instead to welcome them with curiosity. When you can feel your own emotions without making it personal, you are choosing happiness.

And this is actually a very hard thing to do. Emotions feel very personal to us when we feel them, but they don't have to be. They are simply a product of our human experience. We are plugged into a human body and part of that is to feel things. Some pleasant, but some very disturbing as well. Choosing happiness is accepting these disturbances with objectivity, waving at them as they move through you, and letting them go.

Choosing happiness looks like allowing yourself to cry until you no longer need to. Choosing happiness is having a thirst for the knowledge that is taught by the experiences of these difficult and complex emotions. Choosing happiness is taking a step toward the disturbances in the pursuit of knowledge. The knowledge of who you are at a core level.

Next time someone tells you to "choose happiness" ask them, do you even know what that means? They probably do not! They've probably just been bottling everything up and doing the exact opposite, in fact. Choosing happiness is not flipping the switch on disturbing emotions. It is welcoming them so that they may pass through without touching our hearts. Without settling in our hearts. This is how you choose happiness.

Not so bad, eh?