“Are you happy?”
“Not really…”
“Then, you are stupid?”
“No!”
“Happiness isn’t a choice. There are so many things that make us unhappy. There are people who break our hearts…”
“Is that what you believe, that things make you unhappy, that someone can break your heart?”
“Yes.”
“Someone can make you - force to be unhappy, really?”
“Yes. Does that sound stupid?”
“It sounds like you believe it.”
“I can’t help it. Life sucks.”
“Life is full of choices. Do you want to choose unhappiness?”
“If we really do have choices, then of course it would be stupid to choose unhappiness.”
“Exactly.”
“So, are you happy or are you stupid?”
Dialogue Adapted from The Toltec Art of Life and Death by Don Miguel Ruiz.
None of us believe that there are tiny light switches located inside of our skull and attached to our emotions that others can reach in and flip into the “on” or “off” setting. But we are conditioned to believe it is so. We are taught while we are young and then we reinforce those lessons through our language and our behaviors cause us to feel different ways.
We regularly hear and use phrases like:
“They broke my heart”
“She made me feel sad.”
“He made me angry.”
“They offended me.”
But these are false claims based upon absolutely no truth or factual reality. Why don’t we question other people when they make these statements? Why don’t we question ourselves when statements and ideas like these are offered by our internal voice?
Because it’s normal to say and hear phrases like these.
It’s what we learn as we grow up and we begin reinforcing our beliefs in these lessons by using these ideas through our language. Take another look at the dialog at the beginning. Consider the statement,
“Happiness isn’t a choice. There are so many things that make us unhappy. There are people who break our hearts…”
This is a couple of those commonly believed statements jammed into one claim. But can we choose to “be happy” and actually be happy? Not unless we first believe that we actually have a choice.
Do things actually make us unhappy or happy? Yes, if that is what we believe, but we can believe that we control our reaction to things. Again, we have to believe that we have an option first; otherwise we simply default into the mindset of what is socially common. While we are emotionally reacting to something, it isn’t the event or circumstance; it is the meaning we have created around it.
Do other people break our hearts? No, we break our own hearts and are then taught to blame the “other person”. Kyle Cease, comedian and motivational speaker, says that we believe in the meaning around a relationship that we are in and when it ends we might see it as a reflection of “who we are” and thus see ourselves as not worthy. So we are in effect breaking our own hearts by constructing our beliefs around what relationships mean to us. Even if our partner ends the relationship suddenly without explanation or begins a new relationship at the same time, we interpret their external action and react as if their actions cause an emotional response within us, but it is actually our own doing.
It is not just the choice of choosing happiness but the step towards owning the responsibility to choose. When we blame others for how we feel, or blame external circumstances for our internal feelings we are fundamentally giving up our responsibility to feel differently. By owning how we feel and seeing our internal states as a reaction to our beliefs or the resistance to what we don’t want to believe, we take the first step towards constructing our own happiness by taking back the power of choice.
Jesse Silva 7. 10.19