The Happiness Disease Prevents Us From Actualising Our Dreams
These words crossed my mind late last night while drifting off to la-la land. Hypnagogia is what it’s technically known as. It is the transitional state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep. For better or worse, a lot of ideas I’ve had for films and scripts come from this dream-like hypnotic state, but based on my youtube view count, I think it’s safe to assume that it hasn’t benefited me at all. All joking aside though, I’ve always relied heavily on this state for creativity. It’s a weird kind of crutch yet it’s perfectly organic. I’m able to visualise things that would otherwise be impossible to see while fully conscious. It’s the blending of the subconscious and conscious mind that brings about this strange yet perfectly natural ability. While awake, the stresses of day to day life may prevent you from seeing what your true desires are, but your subconscious is always aware and when you drift off to sleep, at least for me anyway, the lines within your mind become blurred and you can no longer suppress and conceal what and how you truly feel about the world, yourself and others. Some people get a similar feeling from drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, others do it naturally through years of therapy and self-reflection or even meditation. But let me not deviate too far and get back to the topic at hand. What exactly is the happiness disease and why does it prevent us from actualising our dreams?
“The happiness disease” sounds like something a jaded New York comedian might say shortly after a messy divorce. In fact, I probably did hear it from a comedian. I don’t know what it means to other people, but to me it’s quite simple. When you’re happy, you’re content. When you’re content, you stop moving. You stop evolving. You sometimes hear about individuals who believe that getting out of their comfort zone allows them to grow and evolve into a better, mentally stronger person. In a research report published in the journal Neuron (July 2018), Daeyeol Lee, a professor of neuroscience at Yale, alongside other colleagues found that learning is only possible when uncertainty is thrown into the mix.
‘Lee and Yale colleagues presented monkeys with tasks where outcome probability was either constant or fluctuating and detected fundamental differences in brain activity during those two conditions, they report July 19 in the journal Neuron.
Activity in areas of the frontal cortex were dramatically reduced when outcome probabilities were fixed and the animal was more certain of the outcome.’ (news.yale.edu, 2018)
If we stop moving, we stop evolving. If we stop evolving, we stop learning and lack of knowledge is one of the fundamental things that prevents us from reaching our goals. There is no room for happiness if you’re a go-getting individual that’s extremely ambitious. Why? Because happiness implies contentedness and ambition is the antithesis of contentedness. An ambitious man is never content. He always wants to do and gain more. You could definitely argue that an ambitious man is capable of attaining happiness, but perhaps not in the same way as a man who’s made peace with his modest life.
If you’re striving to be the best version of yourself, happiness is something that may be hard to attain. Of course, it also depends on your definition of happiness. Do I honestly believe it’s a disease? No, of course not. Perhaps there’s a cynical side within my subconscious brain that does believe it but I don’t think it represents my true, earnest, collective beliefs. What I will say is that in order to attain financial freedom and live a life free of burden, happiness may have to be put on the back-burner. Nothing in life is free and when you’re aspiring for greatness, you will undoubtedly be faced with challenges and struggles that simply do not coincide with happiness.
