Happiness and Optimism

I won't hide it. I've been fairly happy this year. And I have also, at times, been optimistic. This has led me to wonder, which comes first, happiness or optimism. Is it being happy that leads you to being optimistic, or is it being optimistic that leads you to being happy? I've never been able to force myself to be happy, and I've never been able to force myself to be optimistic. Both seem to arise from a source separate from me (certainly separate from my ego).

Is being happy simply the absence of being unhappy, or is happiness some kind of force that pushes unhappiness out of the way, and vice versa? Is our mental state dependent on our thinking, or is our thinking dependent on our mental state? Can we think ourselves into a state of depression and think ourselves out of it? How powerful are our thoughts?

I'm of the opinion that we cannot think our way into and out of these states. If it were that simple, I think most of us would choose constant happiness. So, if thinking is not the source of either happiness or unhappiness, what is? Where do they come from? Are they part of some kind of teeter-totter within our psyches that tips to one side or the other? A pool of positive and negative emotions that bubble up and down, one or the other influencing us, depending on other factors within our lives at the time? Are they parts of our neurons firing and misfiring? Are they some kind of chemicals in our brains that organize and re-organize haphazardly or by some influence, such as thinking?

This is all so puzzling. I just know that when I feel unhappy, that's the way I feel, and it just goes away on its own, and when I'm happy, I'm happy until I feel unhappy. And I don't know why.

I wish I were an optimist.

I'm so impressed by some of my blogging friends that I wonder if I'm not some kind of dullard. I suppose I am. One of the things that separates them from me is their optimism and their positive attitude. They seem to have no worries in the world. And I wonder why I'm not like that.

I don't want to give the impression that I'm a miserable wretch. I just see life as full dangers and impossible to understand events. The dangers don't bother me personally. I've lived a long time now and I've about seen it all, experienced a lot of things I don't care to discuss. I've had a lot of happiness as well as sadness. I've know success and failure. But I have a hard time understanding why bad people seem to win most of the time. Am I wrong in that view of things? I don't know. It's just the way I see it. Yes, bad people often come to an unhappy end in the end. But, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they just seem to win and win and win. Maybe they're not really bad people. Maybe they're good people who make the most of a bad world. I just don't know. Like I said, I don't understand.

Why is it that most of the great artists--writers, painters, mucisians--lived pretty destitute lives while the mediocre thrived? Am I right in that, or am I misinformed? I don't want to ramble on. I just want to know what other people think. I love to read the blogs of the optimists. It actually makes me feel better to read them. But why am I not able to become an optimist? It just isn't me. I've tried. I've read The Power of Positive Thinking. I've read many books on self-improvement, from Depak Chopra to Wayne Dyer. I've studied Hinduism, which seems to be the source of positive thinking, and some of its off-shoots, some of the positive-thinking religions. Nothing works. I am what I am. I keep seeing the negative side.

Isn't that sort of what yin-and-yang is about. We're a mixture of all opposites. To be heavily one or the other is to be out of balance isn't it. Maybe it's a slightly stronger leaning to yin or to yang that makes the difference. Maybe it's just a matter of degree. 51% yin and 49% yang is all it takes to be dramatically different from 51% yang and 49% yin. It's all such a mystery.

Please let me know what you think.