i am happy

When I say "I am happy" what am I really saying? By saying "I am happy" I am saying first of all that "I am", I exist as an entity. This entity is seen as an individual that interacts with other individuals in a world seemingly composed of individual objects; me and you, this and that. To this recognition that "I am" is added a value of emotional content according to the energetic exchange of interactions with other people or objects. When these interactions feel good then I have a "happy" experience.

What is the emotion of "happy"?

It is a value judged on a scale of past experiences. The values are associated with pleasure and pain registered by the senses. In my experience of life I associate happiness with a value judged as good, or pleasurable, according to pleasure received through my senses from others. "I feel good, I am happy."

Happiness and pleasure are what we all learn to seek.

But "happy" isn't alone. On the other end of the value scale of sensual experience is sadness. It is measured in degrees of pain.

Sadness and pain are what we all learn to avoid.

Happy and sad in themselves are natural in the world of I am. There is nothing wrong with them intrinsically, for without them we would not experience all of the wonderful sensations and emotions of life.

Both happy and sad. Pleasure and pain.

The experience of suffering on this roller-coaster of happy and sad has nothing to do with the sensual experiences, or the emotional reactions. Sure being happy is pleasurable and being sad is not pleasurable, but you can see that they both belong in our realm of experience. In this world, like it or not, there is not just "happy". For happiness to exist it has to be where sadness also exists. This manifestation we call living in the world would not be without the full spectrum of experience that is available to us.

The suffering comes into being when we attempt to do the impossible...be only happy.

Avoiding pain and chasing pleasure accentuates the sensations by prolonging them. Attempting to stay out of sadness and remain in happiness, whether we do it with alcohol, drugs, sex, television, food, good company, or even something simply beautiful like a stay in nature, or a sublime meditative experience, is like trying to stop the sun from setting. It can't be done.

The drugs wear off. The sex is over. The seasons change. We are forced to let go of the happy experience and we cringe at the onset of pain.

We cannot stop the experiences from occuring, but we do have a choice to avoid suffering, happiness or no happiness.

If we accept both ends of the spectrum of experience as valid, happiness and sadness, pleasure and pain, understanding that both have their place for life to be, we understand that there ultimately is no possibility of adjusting the reality of any event that happens. Whether it feels good or not it is happening to us. Only in welcoming both can we minimize the suffering that comes about by clinging and avoiding.

By clinging to happiness and avoiding sadness we lengthen the rise and fall of these sensations and the experience of that tension is the suffering.

So when I am happy, that is good, pleasure has its place. But I know it cannot exist without pain and sadness.

I welcome them both as my experience of the play of life.