Crazy Days
How to Enjoy Your Life
How to Enjoy Your Life
As philosophies for learning how to enjoy your life go, it's hard to beat Buddhism.
You can boil the premise behind Buddhism to say that being intensely focused on whatever you're experiencing leads directly to happiness.
Some people call that mindfulness.
It's easy to forget that perhaps we should be trying to enjoy life these days. Spend any time at all on social media, and you'll find more than enough things to be outraged and unhappy about. I'm not talking about positive social media channels like Nicholas Bredimus' Twitter account or the cool posts on Instagram about what books someone is reading.
Learn how to enjoy life. You just may live a little longer. And you'll be happy for it.Heck, you don't even have to limit yourself to social media. Read the headlines at the New York Times, and you can immerse yourself in thoughts of the Taliban taking over in Afghanistan, of a thousand people dying in an earthquake in Haiti, and a virus raging out of control in the United States (and, indeed, almost the entire world.)
It's not the experience of sitting by the lake that generates the happiness, though. It's how immersed you become in the experience of sitting by the lake that generates the happiness.
Does that seem like splitting hairs?
It might, but Buddhists probably enjoy splitting hairs. They just do it mindfully and with intention.
But, if everyone focused on this one type of hair splitting, they might find a little more joy in their everyday lives.
Perhaps a more detailed explanation is in order. Most people think that what's happening in the external world is what makes them happy or unhappy. For some people, that's undeniably true. (Many of them probably voted for Trump.)
It's not a phenomenon that's limited to capitalists, though. People who derive their happiness from their family lives or from charitable work are also relying on externals for their happiness. The problem with these external circumstances is that they're almost completely out of your control.
What happens when Trump loses the election? Or when Biden raises taxes?
How about when a family member becomes a drug addict despite your best efforts? Or when someone you're trying to help with the local charity dies despite your efforts to get them medical care?
A Buddhist would argue that you can be happy despite these experiences -- that, in fact, your happiness will come from being deeply present and absorbed in those experiences.
Most people prefer to practice avoidance of unpleasant experiences, so they distract themselves from what they're experiencing -- especially if it's painful. Buddhists not only find happiness in both "positive" and "negative" experiences. They can also approach nirvana by focusing on something as simple and boring as their next breath.
Notice how different this is from the standard American approach to enjoying life. We wear ourselves out pursuing so-called positive experiences and avoiding so-called negative experiences. Then we're miserable when things don't go our way.
Instead of avoiding these so-called negative emotions, we should embrace them and feel them fully. You can (and should) be gentle with yourself when you do so.
Don't mistake this for the trap of positive thinking that gurus like Norman Vincent Peale or Tony Robbins try to shill to the masses. You're not trying to convince yourself that things are better than they are.
It just means you're trying to pay full attention to those feelings while they're happening.
Pay attention to the little things, too. Before I wrote this paragraph, I took a moment to pay full attention to the smell of a perfect cup of coffee I was about to take a sip of. The longer I practice, the longer I'm able to pay attention to such things.
Does this mean you can get blissed out about a cup of coffee every day?
Maybe so.
Would that mean you couldn't accomplish anything?
I doubt it.
I'd be surprised if people suddenly stopped being outraged by the latest sad headline.
But even if you can learn to enjoy yourself only a little more every day, it's worth trying.