Happiness is not a gift .. Do the good people grieve more than others?

"These days you are in a bad mood, overwhelmed by yourself, absorbed in your soul whose wounds have opened again, only to remind you that nothing is lost, nothing disappears, even the slightest pain and bitter memories, it only retreats for a while, withdraws into an unknown depth, Just as you retreat and withdraw this time, and you will forget it until you return at another time (1)

Amidst all the pains and frustrations that a person faces in his life, he longs for happiness and seeks happiness, hoping to rid his soul of those wounds and sorrows, to laugh with joy, to give his existence a joy that he forgot about the misery he suffered, looking for bliss in life, walking in A journey by which he awaits a path of happiness to take, and this is what the poet Mahmoud Darwish described in his poem:

“We love life if we could get it

 And we dance between two martyrs, raising a minaret for the violets between them, or a palm tree

We would love life if we could find a way to it, and we would

Sociologist Sigmont Baumann (2) tells of the German poet Goethe that he was once asked a question: Have you lived a happy life?

His answer was: Yes, I lived a very happy life, but I don't remember one happy week.

Baumann comments that this concept of happiness is different from our modern concept, as the civilization of consumption and advertising has made us think that happiness is temporary and temporary happiness that must be satisfied here, now and immediately, and that happiness is an unbroken series of ever-improving pleasures.

For Izetbegovic, a happy person does not have a life story.

And one might say: It's as boring as the biography of a happy man who lives in peacetime

And Baumann goes that what Goethe means is that happiness is not merely immediate sensual pleasures, nor what modern civilization offers us in terms of fashion, temptations, and temptations, but rather is overcoming unhappiness, facing problems. Goethe said in one of his poems (3): “The worst nightmare is A series of sunny days, "where the apparent happiness of us turns into boredom, loss of excitement and loss of the purpose for which you seek and fight for in life, and writer Emile Cioran confirms that idea when he said:" What makes human life dark is dark is the absence of history of meaning and its promises That did not materialize

As for the thinker Ali Izetbegovic, he argues that (4) “A happy person does not have a life story. One might say: It is as boring as the biography of a happy man who lives in peacetime. But is it really like this? Is there a really happy man?” The average Swiss is really happy today? ''

Baumann advises us to regard our life as a long-term struggle: a problem is solved, followed by another, and collateral damage is usually disturbing, since the feelings of the experience are what remain in our minds and are what form our impression of the experiences and of life in general, so what can scientists provide us with About that idea, does our happiness lie in the memory or in our feelings stored from experiences?

In a lecture by Daniel Kahneman, Daniel talks about that there are cognitive traps that people fall into when thinking about happiness.

The first of these traps is the reluctance to admit complexity, as the word happiness “is not a useful word anymore because we apply it to a lot of different things. There is one specific meaning that we should stick to, but it is something that we will have to leave behind and we must adopt the more complex view of what well-being is. (5).

As modern civilization presented happiness as having it and wanting more, the concept of happiness mixed with luxury and greed.

The second trap, according to Daniel, is the confusion between experience and memory, between being happy in your life and being happy about your life or happy with your life.

These are two very different concepts, and they are both combined into the concept of happiness.

And the third is "Illusion Focusing, which is the unpleasant fact that we cannot think about any circumstances that affect its well-being without disrupting its importance."

Daniel says that he asked someone about his experience, and he said that he was listening to a symphony, and it was very brilliant music, and at the end of the recording there was a terrifying screaming sound.

Then he added - very emotionally - the whole experience was spoiled.

And Daniel adds that what has been spoiled is the memories of the experience, he went through that experience, and he enjoyed twenty minutes of sparkling music, but these moments were not recorded in the memory because the memory had been corrupted.

What this tells us, is that we may think of ourselves and the rest of the people that we have two types of psychology, the experiencing self, that lives in the present and knows the present, and is able to re-live in the past, but basically only has the present.

It is the experiencing self that the doctor describes when he asks, “Does it hurt you now when I touch you here?” Then there is the memory psyche that maintains the outcome, and preserves our life story, which the doctor approaches when asking the question, “What have you been feeling lately?”

Or "How was your trip to Albania?"

They are two very different things, the psychology of experience and the psyche of memory, and confusing them is part of the disaster that distorts the concept of happiness.

Our memories tell stories not by what really happened but by what was imprinted in the memory about a specific event, we do not just tell stories when we are ready to tell stories, our memory tells us stories, that is what we preserve from our experiences, the story. 

Daniel tells about an old study (6) conducted on real patients who undergo painful procedures, and after a period the pain subsided, and they were asked to report their pain every sixty seconds while they were sick.

In the recordings, the question “Who among them suffered the most pain?” Was a very easy question.

Clearly, Patient B suffered the most pain.

His colon was longer, and every minute of pain that Patient A had, Patient B had more.

But when he was asked another question: "How do these patients feel that they have suffered from pain?"

The surprise was that Patient A had far worse memories of Patient B than the colon.

In the second question, the stories about illness were different because a very important part of the story is summarized in how it ended, and neither of these two stories falls into the circle of inspiration and greatness, so that story that represented the worst experience was where the pain was at its peak in the end.

"We know this from patients' memories of stories of illness and pain," Daniel adds.

We actually do not choose between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences, and even when we think about the future we do not usually think of the future as experiences, we think of our future as expected memories.

This shows a direct contradiction between the experiencing and the remembering psyche, and any slight easing or modification of someone's experience that results in pain relief will change the person’s impression of their entire experience, and this applies to the stories that the memory sends to us, as well as the stories we create.

The story is the changes, the important moments and the endings, the endings are very important, and in this experience the end is overshadowed. (7) The experience memory lives its life continuously, one after the other, and if one of us is asked: What happens to these moments?

The answer is: They are lost forever. Most of the moments in our life during the life span do not leave a trace, most of them are completely ignored by the memory self, and whatever moments we have lived, the matter depends on what remains in our memory.

The difference between the remembering self and the experience - according to Daniel - is that the remembering self does more than remembering and telling stories, it is in fact that it makes decisions, because if you have a patient who has gone through two colon examinations with different surgeons, and the decision has come to choose which of them, then the test he will choose It is related to the memories that represent the least bad, and the surgeon who will be chosen is the one with whom the person has the best memories.

The experiencing self does not have a decision in this choice, we in fact do not make a choice between experiences, we choose between memories of experiences, and even when we think about the future we do not usually think of the future as experiences, we think of our future as expected memories.

"And the two psychologists highlight two ideas about happiness, that there are two concepts of happiness that we apply, one concept for every psyche. We are able to take a very good idea of ​​happiness through the self of experience through time, since if you ask about the happiness of an experiencing self, it is totally different. This matter is not related. With a person who lives happily, it is related to the level of satisfaction or happiness when a person thinks about his life. "

Daniel (8) adds: “We know something about what controls the satisfaction of the happiness psyche. We know that money is very important, and goals are very important. We know that happiness in general is achieved with people we love by spending time with them. There are other pleasures, but This is dominant. So if you want to increase the happiness of the two psychologies, you end up doing completely different things. The bottom line of what I have said here is that we should not think of happiness as synonymous with well-being, it is totally different concepts.

Nice people give generosity without calculation, and this is good and it helps to feel happy, but when a person gives without consideration in exchange for neglecting himself completely, he leaves himself in a state of chaos

In an interview with Mr. Hussein Nasr, Nasr talks about that happiness in the Islamic concept does not exist in the Qur’an except in conjunction with paradise and the status of eschatological bliss. As for life, it is pursuit, endurance and struggle, illusion, effort, fatigue and pain. On happiness.

Islam does not promise a person a feeling of happiness, but rather satisfaction and tranquility, and comes the promise of happiness and eternal bliss linked to the hereafter, and in order for that person to attain eschatological happiness, he must first know himself, and this can only be achieved through affliction, pain and suffering.

Sayed Hussein Nasr also agrees with Zygmont Baumann that happiness is a struggle (9), and happiness stems from within the human being and not from his surroundings, for whatever the environment of a person is happy and comfortable, a person does not feel contented except when it stems from within him, and this is what we can see if we compare the conditions of people In simple African countries and in the countries of Central Asia, other conditions are found in major cities in Europe and America.

The more people approached their simplicity and their freedom, they felt happiness, because - according to Mr. Hussein Nasr - the more people approached his innate nature, upon which he was created, he felt contentment, reassurance and happiness, because the innate state was a paradise state, so happiness is to discover who we are. Imam Abu Hamid Al-Ghazali's philosophy on the chemistry of happiness and knowledge of the state of the heart and the senses, and that the heart is the master of the senses and his happiness in approaching God and touching the spiritual truth.

In an article in the Mind Journal, the author raises six reasons good people don't feel happy:

The first is

that good people also have desires, whether physical or spiritual. Depriving good people of themselves from desires and annihilating in the happiness of others does not necessarily make them feel happy, rather they fail to do so.

Second:

 That nice people give generously, which is not calculated, and this is good and helps to make them feel happy, but when a person gives without being counted in exchange for completely neglecting himself, he leaves himself in a state of chaos, besides that the person gives without account but waits in exchange for all that giving and effort People return the favor to him, which is not often the case, and he becomes frustrated.

Third:

“Your belief that the world will treat you kindly because you are a good person is similar to your belief that the lion will not eat you because you are a vegetarian.” And because of the generosity of good people, they have high expectations towards the world, so whenever they give, they expect that the world will pay attention to them and reward them and return the favor to them, and this is not real and unrealistic , They become very frustrated and useless.

Fourth:

Good people are accustomed to a certain behavior towards others, they are used to sacrificing their time and sleep and work hard to save time to help others, but perhaps their weakness sometimes is that they cannot control that behavior and stop it in the necessary time.

Fifth:

Dissatisfaction with oneself after doing good deeds, some people die from their constant feeling of remorse despite their efforts to give and help, and this is due to the reason that those around them do not appreciate their giving and help, so these people think that their giving was not sufficiently, so the lack of satisfaction continues .

Finally, good, intelligent people often become sad and depressed because when they do not make an effort to help people and provide the best solution to all problems, they go to more complex analyzes of economic, social and political conditions, which causes them pain, depression and sadness, as the strength of their minds causes them suffering and psychological pressure. (10) He tells. Mr. Hussein Nasr said that a Sufi sage in Khorasan was asked: What do you want?

He said, "I want not to," and Nasr comments that this is the core of happiness. Happiness is a spiritual and mystical state of the soul that we seek to obtain in the other, so be compassionate with yourself, do what you have and trust in God.