If You’re Not Happy…

… then the things you’re doing are not the things that make you happy.

This struck me out of the blue the other day. And it seems super obvious, right? How many times do we hear something like, “If you’re not happy you need to do something different.” Or, “If you want to feel something different, you need to do something different.” But for me that has always just created a giant question mark. Sure, I need to do something different, but what?

This time… and this specific way of looking at it… changed things for me. (This is like the phrase, “you want to have your cake and eat it, too.” OF COURSE I want to eat my cake. Then, in college, I came across a Spanish translation of a diary, and it was written differently. It said, “He wants to eat his cake and have it, too.” Same words on either side, same idea, but the order of it flipped it in my mind, too, and it made sense).

I was driving home, listening to Lost Connections by Johann Hari talk about how most depression is a reasonable response to difficult life experiences, and the thought came to me: “If I’m not happy, the things I’m doing are not the things that make me happy.”

This is a bit difficult to explain, but I think if I can take you back to when I was 19, you’ll see what I mean. In addition to going to school, I was also working at a law firm, taking courses and tests to get hired by the fire department, and training to get in shape for the fire department. My daily schedule looked generally like this:

• Wake up at 6:15am, catch the 7am bus to make class at 8am, either reading for class or sleeping on the bus. I used to recognize a couple people from high school and one cute basketball player I recognized from school that I had a crush on, but I was always by myself on the bus.
• Took classes from 8am – 12noon. I knew some people at school, would occasionally stop to talk to somebody, but I never had much time to dilly-dally either between classes or before I needed to get to work.
• After class at noon I would take the train to work, usually sleeping on the ride, never talking to anybody, then stop at a bench on the way to eat a lunch I either brought with me or bought along the way. I remember this is the first time a guy ever hit on me. He asked if he could sit next to me, asked what I was doing, told me I had beautiful eyes. I said thank you and walked on to work. That was the only time I wasn’t alone eating lunch.
• I would work at the law firm from 1pm to 5pm or so. Sometimes I would have to leave early in order to make the required classes and testing for the fire department hiring process. I had two casual acquaintances who were also testing, and I would sometimes sit with them, sometimes be alone.
• If I didn’t have fire department testing, I would take the bus home and be home around 6pm. I would go straight to the gym to lift weights from about 6:30pm to 7:30pm, getting home around 8pm to eat dinner.
• I would then study in my room until about 10pm.
• Around 10pm I would drive over to a stretch of road that had a softer surface and was well-lit enough to run at night (although I rolled my ankle a handful of times). I would usually run two to three miles then head back home.
• After showering I would finish whatever studying I had left. At some point either before or after my run, I would call my girlfriend who was at school an hour and a half away. She didn’t have a job, didn’t exercise, wasn’t working on anything but school, but she usually didn’t have much time to talk.
• I would repeat this schedule every single weekday, occasionally skipping the gym or the run, but most days this was my schedule.
• On weekends I would continue to study, lift weights, and go to the gym. Every third or fourth weekend I would go visit my girlfriend or she would come home to her family. She slept a lot. Studied a lot. And at one point, we went an entire year without having sex. In hindsight I realize she was probably cheating on me and didn’t want to “cheat” on her other boyfriend. But at the time it was just a source of frustration for a very horny, sexual teen-ager.

Now, I ask you, where in my daily life was I doing anything that would bring me happiness? There was some self-worth, there was a sense of purpose, everything I did set me up for the successful life I’ve lived since, but very little in there was going to make me happy on a moment-to-moment, day-to-day basis. I remember writing in my journal over and over and over how much I just wanted a good hug.

Johann Hari says he believes depression is generally a result of disconnection from these 9 key factors of human health:

1. Meaningful Work
2. Other People
3. Meaningful Values
4. Childhood Trauma
5. Status and Respect
6. Natural World
7. Hopeful and Secure Future
8. Genes/DNA (genetic predisposition)
9. Brain Changes (Neuroplasticity)

Looking at that list, I see how many of those things were missing from my 19 year-old life, most notably other people. I was alone. All. The. Time. And even when I was talking to my girlfriend or with her, I was made to feel alone. I did not have someone I could go to for acceptance and validation, and our relationship did not inspire me with hope for a secure or happy future.

Then there’s the word “depressed.” I know what it feels like to be depressed. And, do you know what it feels like? It feels exactly how it looks when the button of a keyboard has been “depressed.” Picture that button stuck in the down position, unable to bounce back up, surrounded by other buttons upright. So I started looking at which activities not only make me feel that way, but make me LOOK that way.

For example, picture somebody bent over their phone, scrolling through Instagram not because they’re looking for something specific but because they’re sucked down the rabbit hole. That activity doesn’t invigorate me. Doesn’t make me feel alive. Doesn’t create a spark in me, doesn’t bring out my vitality. When I watch too much TV I can slump down into that “depressed” position. Then think of the activities where it’s impossible to get stuck down. Exercise (Motion creates emotion). Dancing. Playing a game with a toddler. Hugging your friends. Laughing uncontrollably. Sex… although one might think of that image of the short, stuck down keyboard button and picture…

Even crying uncontrollably. That might not be fun, but it’s hard not to feel alive when you’re purging pent up emotions. Cause really, depression is just lack of emotion, lack of vitality. So even some of the negative emotions like fear may not be fun, but you won’t feel depressed when you’re quaking at the top of a steep cliff; you’ll most certainly feel alive.

So where does that leave me? It has me looking at what I do, and what I really want out of that activity, and whether I get it or not. Take porn. I watch porn because I’m sexual and I want an outlet. But what do I really want from sex? I want connection to someone. I want security. I want acceptance. I want validation. Porn gives me NONE of those things. This is not to say that porn is bad. Or even that I won’t ever watch porn again. But it means that if I look a little deeper and realize that what I want more than porn is to feel accepted by someone, then maybe I try to reach out to a friend and talk instead of getting sucked into a porn vortex. I can save masturbation for when I’m truly horny as opposed to it being a way to fill the void of one of my lost connections.

Lastly, I want to talk a little about other people. I’m an introvert. Other people wear me out. And, let’s be honest, most people fucking suck. But I’ve noticed that I react to people differently. There are some people who put me on edge, I’m wary, I feel myself instinctively leaning away from them, sitting back in my chair, angling away from them. On the flip side, some people make me want to lean in, have more of them in my life. This can be good. But it can also be bad – most of us have had someone in our lives whom we wanted more attention from than they seemed inclined to give. Someone who our connection to always feels a bit tenuous, like if we did or said the wrong thing they’d disappear from our life. Then there are those magical people who just make us feel safe. When you see each other you both light up naturally and want to embrace. The person you never worry about pestering too much, and the person you never wish wouldn’t ask you to hang out.

How do you spend your time? Are those activities making you happy? SHOULD those activities be making you happy? And if something isn’t making you happy, what could you replace it with to get something positive out of it instead?