Why one is not happy?

There are all sorts of answers to this question. One of the them would be that one cannot actualize his/her will(s). For example if i want to have deep-fry osyter cake while living in Britain which offers the most terrible cuisine in the world, my will cannot be actualized and therefore I feel not happy. That is a trivial example but variations of it happen everyday, from failing to possess a commodity to being pestered by your boss. This kind of unhappiness will lose trace quickly. For the sake of argument, lets call this the unhappiness in the present.

I want to make a distinction between being not happy and being unhappy. I see the latter as a more pretentious and self-deceptive phenomenon, which deserves a seperate discussion. Going back to those who are not happy. Most of us bear a wound (at least one) in oursevles which causes pain. The pain however is unconscious, and is often triggered by some unexpected event. To be more precise, it's not an event which causes these pain: it's certain thought vaguely contructed in your memory which releases the dam of pain. This pain is not physical, but it's always the mental torture which gives us the most painful.

This pain, to which I called the unhappiness in the past, can only appeal to human being who has the capacity to reflect on things. He reflects on what he did and what he did not do in his life; he reflects on how people judge himself; he reflects on whether he has fulfilled his responsibilities. All these questions trouble him. Some of us are able to shed the burden immediately. But people who cannot leave his ego aside will inevitably suffer, regardless of one's gender.

To cut things short, I want to bring in the third kind of unhappiness, which is that in the future. This unhappiness crushes you to the bottom, ceases you from actions, freezing every moment in the world. As I said, one is unhappy because one's will is not actualized. The most unhappy man is the one who does not see this as a problem. That says, he who is unhappy knows very well that his will will not be acutualized. I am a fan of a singer and tonight i am going to his concert. That supposes to be a very exciting night. But long before the concert begins, i feel a certain kind of unhappiness which puts off all my desire to listen to the beloved singer. I will still go to the concert, that is for certain. But I know very well that I will not be satisfied right at the moment when i step in the concert hall. Because of that I cannot fully engaged with the concert anymore. While i am following the crowd, humming the wonderful lyrics written, my other-me step aside with my happiness in his hands. My happiness is not stolen, but placed in somewhere else. I know very well but all the same.

The unhappiness in the future is a wonderful privilege for men who can 'think ahead'. What a beautiful phrase used in the circle of utilitarianism! It's nothing bad to think ahead for one's career or the assignment to be done in a month time. But it's dangerous to think ahead of interiority. Things get a little complicated here. Just imagine, can one think ahead without creating a vague picture of the future in his mind? The picture includes the imaginary reactions of your colleagues, result of your effort put, etc - things that are carefully calculated and pretty concretely imaged in the picture of the future. The picture of the future cannot accurately depict the future. When the future comes, what makes your not happy is not that picture at all. The picture is imagined when t (time) = 0. And in fact the picture has no time, as if the picture will actualize in the same way in any moment. But that of course if wrong. When you 'arrive' at the future, there will be a different time. And what crushes you will be another 'picture'. To be more precise, it's a picture without an image. It's not representations (picture) which shoplifts your happiness; it's something else, something not at all representable in a picture. And when you arrive at the present, the happiness you will recieve will be the happiness of the present. But the problem is: we cannot do away with time. If we can there will be no unhappiness in the past and the future.

It is time which makes one not happy. But it is also time which defines what is a being. How can we live fully in the present, yet not forgetting our vulnerability to our past and future? How can we fully immerse in what we are doing now and not distracted, given that so many people are doing different things and seemingly better things? How can we be happy if we know very well that we will be not happy? Shall we pull ourselves into the wonderful world of entertainment, get away from a critical life, and follow what the world tell us to do?

You can see the unhappiness in the present originates in the realm of animalistic desire, i.e. the immediate want of things. The unhappiness in the past comes from the realm of memory. We are all trained to be a mnemonics; to forget to forget is like the most devilish thing in front of your colleagues. The third unhappiness, which i think is the most terrible, that in the future originates in the problem of interpretation. We have a thirst to interpret things, particularly things which cannot be known. In 19th century this would be called ennui, something very close to melancholy. One of my friend reminds me of this terrible state of mind, that i know very well that i will be not happy. This self-destructive mode of being is not a personality type. It's crsis of interpretation, of thinking 'too much'. Dostoevsky writes, 'to think too much is a disease.' The melancholic man would rather have that disease and die asap. But the point is: to think too much does not lead you to anywhere, not even a simple predicate.