Everyone's An Asshole Except Kids and Seniors: A Book of Normal Thinking by Jeremy Ian

Author:Jeremy Ian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

“HAPPINESS COMES FROM WITHIN”

To believe such a thing means you’re either spiritual or have just swallowed an antidepressant.

The former is the kind of person who keeps perpetuating this false belief. As the thinking goes, it’s our attachment to external rewards (people, material things and such) that cause all our misery, because once we lose them our happiness increases.

So instead, look inward at your true self, your inner being, spirit, soul, god essence, what have you, and there you’ll find an endless reservoir of happiness to tap into.

Sounds all well and good until you realize the hypocrisy of it all.

For spiritual people are buyers of external happiness as well. No one, but absolutely no one, would ever buy into the idea of a spirit, soul or god without also being sold the heaven or reincarnation feature as well, both of which are outside of us.

What’s really going on is not a look inward but rather a look toward a reward that comes after life. This feeling artificially boosts reward chemicals (such as dopamine), making the believer feel hopeful and excited.

This makes him no different to the person who relies on antidepressants for his happiness, which artificially boosts his feel-good brain chemicals in lieu of what causes many to become depressed: a lack of or absence of life’s natural external rewards.

Things like fresh food, a comfortable place to sleep, a decent income, authentic social connection, social status, sex and/or children … these are the things that bring us happiness. And they’re all external.

In fact, if you were to proclaim, “I’m just happy to be alive,” then you would have external atmosphere and oxygen to thank for that as well.

For if you take away from a person the above-mentioned list (minus the air) and confine her in a room all by herself, you now have what is prison’s harshest of punishments.

If happiness truly came from within, you could sentence someone to solitary confinement and he’d find a way to have the time of his life in there. Which, of course, he can’t.

Happiness doesn’t come from within, because the things we need to meet our needs are not within us. They’re outside of us. They’re external.

Therefore, happiness comes from without.

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