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May. 9th, 2006 10:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmerI remember when Prozac was starting to become famous. There were some people who were acting like it was something terrible, because it helped depressed people. People had to be depressed, these people reasoned, because if they weren't miserable, they wouldn't recognize that their lives needed changing.
To me, that was ridiculous. It's like saying that a happy person might not recognize that being punched in the face is a bad thing. (Note that antidepressants don't make people "happy", either. Their effects vary; their intent is to break a person out of depression, where a person often can't be happy. But a non-depressed person can also be miserable.) If Prozac were more like Valium, it might have been a valid argument... but it wasn't. (I do have to admit that the former popularity of "Mother's little helper" did give people reason to be suspicious.)
It tied in with some earlier ideas I'd had. I used to think that pain was inherently bad. I wouldn't argue that sometimes pain was useful and all-but necessary, but I took it as an axiom that pain was bad. Although we learned through painful experiences, I felt that it was vital to say that we could have learned the same lessons without the painful experiences... it just would have taken longer and possibly not have been as clear a lesson.
I'm not as sure about that any more. But all of this thinking did help me to develop another thought, and that can be summed up like this: misery never helps anyone.
Even if pain is helpful, even if suffering is necessary, even if misery is a perfectly understandable and human reaction, it still isn't helpful.
That doesn't mean it's bad, or stupid, or is a reason to feel guilty. It just means that it's not helping. What I mean by this is, if you can overcome the misery, if you can feel balanced and okay in spite of the misery-evoking things that are happening to you, you'll be better off.
I don't mean that people should ignore the things making them miserable; I don't mean people should deny that they feel miserable, or put on a happy face so as not to be a drag on other people's good feelings. But I'm starting to believe that it is possible to find a way to break free of the chains of misery, and that doing so is always a good thing. It always reduces the number of unhappy/miserable people in the world by one, and it makes a person more able to deal with life. Happiness lends you energy to deal with whatever life throws at you.
I'm not sure if there's any point to this... I'm still not sure if I've found any great answers to questions about happiness yet. So, let's just call this a ramble and move on.
To me, that was ridiculous. It's like saying that a happy person might not recognize that being punched in the face is a bad thing. (Note that antidepressants don't make people "happy", either. Their effects vary; their intent is to break a person out of depression, where a person often can't be happy. But a non-depressed person can also be miserable.) If Prozac were more like Valium, it might have been a valid argument... but it wasn't. (I do have to admit that the former popularity of "Mother's little helper" did give people reason to be suspicious.)
It tied in with some earlier ideas I'd had. I used to think that pain was inherently bad. I wouldn't argue that sometimes pain was useful and all-but necessary, but I took it as an axiom that pain was bad. Although we learned through painful experiences, I felt that it was vital to say that we could have learned the same lessons without the painful experiences... it just would have taken longer and possibly not have been as clear a lesson.
I'm not as sure about that any more. But all of this thinking did help me to develop another thought, and that can be summed up like this: misery never helps anyone.
Even if pain is helpful, even if suffering is necessary, even if misery is a perfectly understandable and human reaction, it still isn't helpful.
That doesn't mean it's bad, or stupid, or is a reason to feel guilty. It just means that it's not helping. What I mean by this is, if you can overcome the misery, if you can feel balanced and okay in spite of the misery-evoking things that are happening to you, you'll be better off.
I don't mean that people should ignore the things making them miserable; I don't mean people should deny that they feel miserable, or put on a happy face so as not to be a drag on other people's good feelings. But I'm starting to believe that it is possible to find a way to break free of the chains of misery, and that doing so is always a good thing. It always reduces the number of unhappy/miserable people in the world by one, and it makes a person more able to deal with life. Happiness lends you energy to deal with whatever life throws at you.
I'm not sure if there's any point to this... I'm still not sure if I've found any great answers to questions about happiness yet. So, let's just call this a ramble and move on.
