10. The Joy Particle
THE JOY PARTICLE
NOT HAPPY WITH HAPPY
I wrote a poem a few weeks ago which is on the blog post before this one. The poem was written when I was sad, like most poems. It was written during a period I refer to as a T.P.E.( Two Poem Episode) documented in another blog post called A Postcard From Brain Hell. The idea of the poem was to touch on the elusiveness Happiness.
I originally started thinking of how radioactive particles decay, I know proper sexy stuff. They have a half-life that obeys a formula. It got me thinking about the idea that if you half the distance to a destination every time, you will move forwards but never really reach it. It brought to my mind that I don't really know what happiness looks like and as a concept it doesn't work for me.
I know that happiness is not sadness and it is not boredom or drudgery or suffering. I could tell you if I was happier five minutes ago or maybe have a stab at thinking about it generally, but all levels of happiness seem defined by what has come before and what comes after.
Example
I check the lottery and find I have five numbers. My mood goes through the roof. I then check again and I have been looking at last week's numbers and I didn’t do the lottery last week. My mood goes through the floor. From normal to up and down within minutes. I might have described myself as happy before checking but how would I describe myself now?
Quite often we pass through happiness oblivious to it, like forgetting to look at the countryside on a long train journey. It is only when things take a turn for the worse do we then see ourselves as having been happier before. Ask anyone with a toothache.
I know when Manchester United won the treble I was super happy or when England won the cricket World Cup in the extra over or when I got married. These are all overwhelming moments I attached the banner “Happy” to without question. So what about the less overwhelming moments? Like the minor victory of finding the lone car parking spot in the Aldi car park is free. Are these moments worthless or not counting on the happinometer? Do we need lots of these to add up a general bigger state happiness?
Happiness is so highly rated. Of all emotions it is the one everyone would ask for. It has the highest Trustpilot score. If in doubt most people would say “ I just want to be happy.” There is such a pressure to be happy. Not to be happy is almost seen as a failure or at least something to be avoided. If someone tells you they are not happy isn’t your first response to ask why or even to try and fix them?
In Western society “Happiness” feels like something to be obtained and captured. It is to be cajoled out of its hiding place in order to be put inside of us. Once we obtain it, it becomes a major priority and tricky balancing act to keep it there. Is it not the case that the longer we hold on to happiness the better everything it will be? Happiness has always been sold to me as a desirable destination rather than a place I already live.
For me this feels like an artificial notion led by product designers and marketing specialists trained to create the missing pieces of the human jigsaw. We are sold the need we didn’t know we had, but it dissolves as easily as it was bought.
We are bombarded by ideas that appeal directly to our never happy ego. The Ego is a person/thing/entity inside which exists on a level of high alert. It has a radar scanning for danger. The danger is anything that might tear away the illusion of self and it desires anything that might strengthen it. The things we don’t have are possible bits of armour that we are missing. They will protect us better and that protection makes us happy.
The moment we see happiness in this way we are admitting to our subconscious that actually happiness lies as an external thing beyond us. Like anything outside of us we are placing it into the arena or other people and other places not under our control. We now are the mercy of the tides and the winds.
So much of our search for happiness does not take into account the quality of our journeys towards it or the quality of happiness we find.
The thing that makes us happy maybe no good for us but happiness doesn't really care. I could be happy wearing underpants two sizes too small while jiggling kittens. Just because I am happy doing it doesn’t mean it is a worthwhile pastime.
Maybe it might be better to use a more real world example
Example
I really want a pair of Nike Airforce. It is a new version with a thicker sole and I know where they are. I can buy them online but I want to try them on. Let’s pretend the world hasn’t ended and shops still exist. My journey involves putting petrol in the car and a guy jumps the queue at the pumps. I catastrophize about several scenarios where he gets rough justice and I end up in prison dancing for a guy called Big Nicky. I eventually refuel and head to the Tragic Centre (Trafford Centre or local Mall). I navigate traffic and have to find parking. The shops are busy and the shoes are thrown at me then snatched back then thrown at a till operative. I buy them, take them home take a picture and stick it on Instagram. I get some likes and some people notice at work then the attention dies away. The next time I put them on they are slightly dirty and I don’t feel as good as when I first put them on. And so it goes.
The journey to be at the place of happiness can be fraught with stress and disappointment. All variations on this theme lay outside of ourselves and in many cases beyond our control. The idea of obtaining happiness this way feels unsustainable.
I also have an issue with the fact I cannot imagine being happy when I'm not? What a bloody cheat. I have no problem conjuring a terrible moment from the past or thinking a sad thought but trying to think yourself happy, well good luck with that. Yes I meditate and I can do things that generate happiness but from a cold standing start I have no chance of feeling it. I can paint the picture. I just can’t feel the picture.
So I thought it was time for a different picture.
THE JOY PARTICLE
I prefer to think of life now in terms of a sense of “joy”. The sense of joy is inside of us already. It can be accessed and experienced with zero effort or lots of training depending on the point from where you start.
A baby has no conception of the term happiness, but show me one baby that does love playing peek-a-boo with their parent. We somehow unlearn this innate sense of joy the more self conscious we become and many like myself end up adopting worry as our default emotion. The older we get the more we start to believe that we need certain things to be in alignment before we can allow ourselves to feel it. We begin a process of disconnection from our innate ability to feel joy and even end up distrusting our own need to return. We shroud it in superstitions and individual folklore. It then takes an effort of will to get back there. We effectively board up our beautiful houses to preserve their content.
So here is where I will get a bit freaky so bear with me. I am not clear if this is a river type thing or a pool but whatever it is it contains thousands of particles of perfectly formed joy. When they are experienced in numbers it is similar if not almost indistinguishable from “Happiness”. An action or a thought can attract or replay them like a magnet does with iron filings.
Joy particles are sentient capsules that contain light. Light as a feeling of weight and light as sense of visible brightness. The more of them arrive to investigate the stronger the feeling. Once they arrive they want to stay or decide to slide away.
You have a drink, snort a line, drop a pill or buy a new pair of shoes and they will arrive as quickly as this guy.
Not sure how old you are but he is called Speedy Gonzales he was “The Fastest Mouse in all Mexico” I am not sure he still is, but I haven't heard of another one. They will arrive on mass at the scene and begin to check out what has called them. If the stimulus is what I would call digital rather than analogue they will have a chat amongst themselves about all the excitement and then realize after a few have banged in to one another that it is a bit of a false alarm and there is not much actually going on. The analogue frequency is the one that resonates with your life. In other words it is your gut feeling.
The more artificial the stimulus the quicker they will realize and head south. Their light dims as they head away and you are left with the weight of not only yourself again but it will feel heavier now like the weight of the world.
In fact the more artificial the experience the less likely they are to show up next time. When they get wise they may only turn up in a fewer and fewer numbers and look more like this guy.
He is called Droopy and even though he was the protagonist in all his cartoons he was the first depressed carton character.
The more organic and slower the process, action or thought you experience the slower they will notice and the slower they will come, but once there they are likely to hang about for much longer. You may even get lucky and they hang about all day. Put in the work and they will be with you most of the time.
For me “The Work” is sobriety, yoga, mediation, cooking and creativity. These bring about a lightness of spirit. They bring forward the Joy Particles and they encourage them to hang around for a bit as there is something happening.
The strongest of these for me is yoga and meditation which I feel actually polarize the particles in one direction. Like when you magnetize a metal object with a large magnet. They not only tell them what direction to head for next time these continued practices create pathways to the surface. The more I do of them the wider and stronger the pathways become. It is my continued hope that the place I am making for them might be somewhere they stay for longer and longer and maybe one day I will get to visit where they come from.
Exercise 1
If I said to you right now “Are you happy?” what would you say back?
Have you responded with a resounding “Yes” or “No”?
Have you answered yes and added a “but”?
Are you annoyed at me for asking?
When you get chance think about the word happiness. Keep this word in your head for about 10 minutes. Your mind may wander and that is OK. Try and come back to the word.
What does your mind do to this word?
Does it attack as if it is a foreign body entering the immune system or does it welcome it like lowering in to a nice a warm bath?
Exercise 2
Now I would like you think of joy in the same way. Keep the word joy in word head and see what happens.
Are there any differences in these two in terms of the way your mind reacts?
Exercise 3
Grab a piece of paper and pen.
Split the page in half.
In the top half now write the first 10 things that come in to your mind when you think of joy, basically write 10 things that bring you joy. It can be anything and in no particular order as the numbers are not important yet. Go for it and be honest. If is bad for you or good for you if it is naughty or nice write 10 down.
Is this an easy exercise so far? Did you have a block appear after writing something or just before writing something?
When you have you 10 move on.
In the bottom half of the page I would like you to draw a graph. On the Y axis(up/down) write Intensity or Level of Joy and on the X axis (left/right) write the word "Duration" or "Time". You can put some in-between marks on these lines if you want to be fancy or you can use this.
There is no right or wrong here and no judgements as only you will see it.
Does this graph sort of represent your joys correctly? Overall is it OK?
This is all I really wanted you to do and you can stop here. But there are a few observations on which you could be mindful.
- Circle ones that involve no money
- Put a square around those that require other people
- Put a "+" by those which you feel to be beneficial to your health or "-" to those that have a detrimental effect of your health
Ok this is it for now. I hope you enjoyed (no pun intended) this and let me know if any of it resonated with you or you just hate the whole thing. It has been a bit of fun I hope. My main thing I would like you to take away from this is that happiness is relative and shaky so don't rely on it. Joy is yours, it belongs to you. It has always been yours. When you feel it so strongly let it spill over for others.
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