Last time we have discussed two fundamental sources of happiness. Simply put, these two types refer to the external and the internal, respectively. We need to make a choice to prioritize which is more important. Indeed, the choice is not usually made without deep awareness and hard effort. We default to rely on external resources to make us happy.
The reason is easy to understand. Because we just get used to it without even realizing it. Our understanding of happy experience can always be traced back to the time when we were kids. When we had some delicious food, nice clothes, or lived in a comfortable place, we would feel happy. When we achieved a good grade or won a game, we would receive appraise from others and feel happy. These are all external. Our initial understanding of happiness comes entirely from the happy moments we encountered over time. Thus we tend to think that obtaining something valuable is important because it will make us happy.
However, we do not realize that it is this kind of habit that frame our views about happiness. To change a habit always require a huge amount of effort, and without any effort, we always tend to lean to our default choice. Thus it is unsurprising that many of us would put heavy weights on external valuable stuff. It all comes from our initial happiness experience. That’s our default choice. Without realizing it, without carefully thinking and examing our choices, we are not making any choices at all.
You might say, “But wait. Why do you think there is a choice to make and the default is bad? “Well, I haven’t said that default is bad yet. (It takes another very long argument to discuss this point clearly, which I will leave into my future posts) At this point, I just want you to realize that we do have choices, and we tend to rely on our past experiences and habits because of our reluctance to put in the effort. We tend to ignore the second important resource of happiness, that is, skills development and mental growth. In fact, many of us probably have experiences of happiness from the internal, when we figured out how to solve a difficult problem, or when we gained a piece of new knowledge and skill, or when we better understand other people. These moments do make us happy, but we tend to forget it at times because we are focusing too much on external valuable things.
Someone might argue that the internal is only our means to obtain the external, which is our goal. Well, to turn things upside down, I am going to tell you that the internal can also be the sole goal with the external as a means. It is just an entirely different choice, but it is also possible. The first step is to realize that we should stop effortless thinking because it will only lead us to our past experiences and default views. We have a choice to make, and this will inevitably take effort.
Why should we question our default view, and why must we take an effort in thinking it hard? Stay tuned.
(To be continued)
