LITTLE DOSES OF HAPPINESS

If you ask a random person walking on the street, minding their own business, what they would do if they hypothetically won a million dollars, the popular reply would be, 'I'll be very happy, of course.' Then, they would go ahead to mention how the one million dollars (hypothetically speaking, of course) would make all of their problems go poof. Notice that at this moment, the person (probably not all of them because not everyone has a sense of humor, and everyone is angry these days) is beginning to talk excitedly, as if in anticipation of the hypothetical one million dollars. You notice them looking at you, a twinkle of hope in their eyes, hoping for a fleeting moment that you're probably some Mr. Beast type of person wishing to gift them a huge amount of money. You would notice, too, that they tend to look around quite often, hoping to catch the hidden camera man somewhere behind a car or a bus or behind a bush. They don't see any hidden camera man, and they cannot ask you why you were asking million-dollar questions, but they hope that if they play along and in the end act surprised when you finally reveal your act, they would have done you a favor: being real for the camera.

But none of these happens: you are not Mr. Beast, and they don't get to receive a million dollars. You thank them for their time, and they walk away, a tad expectant, a tad disappointed, a tad anxious, and a tad happy. Let's focus on the tad happiness. Believe it or not, you made that person happy in that you made them think of the unthinkable. You not only made them think of what they may never attain in their lifetime, you made them talk about it as if they already had it. You gave them what they may or may not have had: hope and belief. You made their (day) dreams come true. And in your inadvertence, you received the same dose of happiness as you had given. Afterwards, when all the emotions die down, they are left feeling empty and depressed, which isn't any fault of yours, to be honest, it is simply the consequence that comes from receiving happiness in doses or expecting happiness at all.

You see, contrary to what we've been led to believe, we cannot just be happy. Life isn't wired to work that way. Happiness, like every other emotion, is a reaction received after an action has occurred. In other words, just like one cannot just become angry or fall into a bad mood without cause (something always caused you to be angry or fall in a bad mood), one cannot just be happy without the action from an external source. In other, other words, your happiness doesn't come from within, and it is even less subtle in this age of social media perfectionism and positive affirmations, where your emotions always depend on the positive and negative feedback you receive after making a post. Say, you recently bought a car, a nice car, which made you very happy—obviously. You took pictures of your new ride and posted it on your favorite social media platform, and after a few minutes, the comments start to pour in—positive comments like 'nice car' (external action) and stuff like that. You're feeling really happy from all the positive comments you're reading (reaction), but as you scroll on, you come across a comment like 'That is an old model. Too cheap to afford a recent one?' (another external action), and automatically you go from hundred to zero in less than a second. You're fuming. Understand that it was a car you bought with your money, and buying the car made you happy, but after that one bad comment (or several of them), you stop being so happy about the cheap, old model car.

So, how can we be happy and stay happy if we cannot, by ourselves, make ourselves happy? The solution lies within us. The key lies in being the action that extracts the positive reaction from others. For inasmuch as there is no such thing as 'happiness is free' (if you keep looking at it from the I-can-make-myself-happy angle), happiness can be freely given to others through deeds and words. To be truly happy is to receive and/or share in the happiness of another. It is unselfish as it is pure; even though nothing lasts forever, and emotions are as erratic as they come, little doses of happiness from one to another may yet be the motivation to hope and believe.