How Do You Stay Happy In Depressing Times?

Don’t ask me how I stumbled across this video, it’s the guy from Oingo Boingo, an eighties “pop” band, and a song he put out at the end of last year.

It’s perhaps more indicative of how people aren’t really all that happy, even perhaps psycho nut jobs in a certain portion of the population, but it made me think about the topic. (BTW check out that link of what came up first on Google when I typed in psycho nut job).

For many years I followed a quasi Buddhist mindset about happiness, that desire is the cause of all suffering, and that if you can just satisfy the bare minimum required to convince yourself to be content, that’s all you need.

The idea was that in thinking about what you don’t have, you make yourself unhappy and don’t recognize the things you do have.

I’ve been doing that a fair bit lately, looking back on my life with some bitterness that I didn’t date lots of good looking women, didn’t have a family, didn’t party like it was 1999, even when it was 1999.

The thing about that is, those things I wish I had done, or that I could have now come with their own hard work and dramas, stress, pain, etc.

I was trying to learn how to take control of my own mind because I’ve seen religious people do it, they just believe hard enough, and they can pretty much make themselves happy, regardless of their situation.

It takes practice, and it’s not necessarily one particular religion, or one particular line of thinking, it’s just being positive rather than negative, even just having a sense of humor.

Studies show that just forcing yourself to smile or laugh can actually make a huge difference to the way you feel, and people even go to groups to laugh together for maybe an hour at a time.

They also have groups of primal screaming and crying like babies, but you know, you just have to try to do what makes you feel good, that you can do, and appreciate that, rather than think about what you don’t have.

There’s been a lot of fear and hate in propaganda of one sort or another recently, everyone seems like they’re a victim of something or someone or they point out other victims as if it’s a never ending duty to do that.

This is perhaps important, to be aware of suffering in the world in order to try to make positive change, but it’s not the best way to make yourself or others feel good, so you need balance.

If you can’t make yourself happy, you can at least start by not worrying too much or taking life too seriously, as it doesn’t really matter all that much anyway, unless you can think of some reason why it does.