Don't Worry, be Unhappy

This is the title of the current Yoga Journal's Editor's Letter. In it, the editor muses about the possibility that the obsession to be happy, often viewed as an obligation, and leaving us feeling as failures if we don't achieve it, opens the door to depression. We are depressed because we've "failed" at being happy. Huh. Sounds like begging the question, or something. The logic is perverse, in a way. Yet it makes complete sense. According to Dennis McMahon, author of Happiness, a History, the idea that we must strive for happiness, that we have come to expect it, is only about 200 years old. He traces this in part to the changes in religious and secular culture. Very interesting. The editor says "The idea that happiness may be oversold lessens the 'I'm a failure' facture and opens a doorway that allows self-compassion to enter. And that, say Buddhist psychologists, is the key to healing depression."

This makes a lot of sense when you think about all the way people chase after things they believe will make them happy: more money, shopping trips, love, sex; the way we parade what we have so that others will see: see! I'm not a failure. I've got all these things! How could I be anything but happy with all these things, this beautiful girlfriend, this brand new car.

I'm not a celebrity watcher, but perhaps people are looking at celebrities for clues that they're less happy than we perceive ourselves to be, leaving us the victor, and pushing away that feeling of having failed.

This holds a clue for Christmas depression, something which seems to hit me every year, no matter what I do, especially from Christmas Eve, about 6 pm and lasting until bedtime on Christmas Day. After that, I'm fine again. I suspect that this has something to do with the fact that I have no family living nearby.