Nowadays, I describe myself as happy and satisfied. To some extent, life feels like my boyhood again in which life was (also) simple. Before, my situation was (very) different. In the worst of my years, I was unhappy and dissatisfied. It seems that I have come full circle. I am determined to stay in the upper right quadrant of my diagram below.
All 4 quadrants describe the various phases in our lives. They seem to overlap my concepts of (i) Needs, Wants & Beliefs and (ii) Awakening, and also the concept of Body, Mind & Soul.
Start and Finish is in the Awakening, which represents the initial natural physiological birth and (perhaps) a future spiritual birth.
The Needs stage is characterized by varying degrees of satisfaction and varying degrees of emerging unhappiness. The unhappiness may relate to missing a soulmate or romantic partner.
The Wants stage has varying degrees of both unhappiness and dissatisfaction. A typical example at this stage is consumerism. Please also see my 2016 blog More is Better.
The Beliefs stage should bring back happiness but controlling one’s dissatisfaction may remain a challenge. A typical example is minimalism (Big Think, my 2014 blog Less is more). Any extremism is likely in this area of Beliefs, dissatisfaction and (emerging) happiness (eg, Black Lives Matter, Brexit, Political Islam, #MeToo, Trumpism, White Supremacy).
My current state of well-being does not imply that I do not complain. I do. The short autumn and winter days and its low temperatures, are a nuisance to me. I do realise, however, that it’s just several weeks. The shortest day of the year, December 21, will arrive soon. Complaining does not always equal dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and/or negativity (eg, Big Think, NYT).
It’s tempting to fast-forward the above cycle. Life does not offer that option because life is about learning. Learning what is important to you and what is important about life. Both are not necessarily the same. For some, more will always be better. Others will realise that owning more stuff brings more worries. In life, you can find happiness and satisfaction for some time but you cannot keep it. Ultimately, both happiness and satisfaction are a state of mind, a belief.
Happy (2013) by Pharrell Williams – artist, lyrics, video, Wiki-1, Wiki-2
Here come bad news talking this and that, yeah,
Well, give me all you got, and don’t hold it back, yeah,
Well, I should probably warn you I’ll be just fine, yeah,
No offense to you, don’t waste your time
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