this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2024
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2meirl4meirl
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You're being down voted because your entire reply sounds like, "Well, if you're depressed, have you tried being happy?"
"Unhappy" could be because your basic needs aren't being met, or you don't have enough time/energy outside of your two jobs to pursue any happiness. Or you could have just been broken up with, or lost a loved one. Or you're disenfranchised with your government, you don't feel represented, you've just lost to fascism. Or it could be chemical imbalances in your brain leading to a variety of potential mental health issues, or simply being neurodivergent. Or you could be LGBTQ+ in a place where it isn't safe to be that, or you don't have rights, or you are outright illegal.
Telling anyone living under those or similar circumstances to "just be content" is just insulting. Being "content" doesn't put food on the table or a roof over your head, and it doesn't improve the quality of your life under a system designed to destroy as much of your quality of life as possible.
Telling someone who is struggling to be neurodivergent in a world designed by and for people who are neurotypical, what contentedness are they supposed to find in life being a daily struggle in ways they may not even be able to explain, or that sound unreasonable to the average neurotypical.
Where is someone with mental/physical health issues but no access to health insurance or healthcare supposed to find contentedness in that situation?
Notice how in a lot of my examples, "happy" is more closely aligned to "comfortable" than it is "overfilled with joy and ecstasy every waking moment of the day." You can't tell people to be content when they're uncomfortable, especially when that discomfort is likely a result of basic needs not being met.
I'm down voted because nobody reads and understands my comment, which is fine because we all don't think the same, and I don't look for approval. By all means, disapprove! I reject conformity! That being said, part of the loneliness many people experience is because they want to "fit in". Like I said, who cares what others think! As long as it won't affect you or others in negative way, why should anyone care how you do, what you do, or what you choose! With the exception of extreme examples (as you mentioned, being lgbt in an oppressive society, although Stoicism has something about countering a tyrannical regime but that requires its own wall of text) most of us live in theoretically a free society and yet we choose to let ourselves be imprisoned by opinion of others. And conversely, we let people who don't mean to us live rent free in our minds. "Hell is other people" as Albert Camus said.
I don't equate "content" to "happy". If you read carefully, I reject "happiness" whatever it means. I define content as being in the medium of accepting what is not in their control and changing when one's in control. I don't mean to tell others to "just be happy", I mean to say "change what you can change"! It is like being on a boat on a river. You can't change what direction you're going because the flow of the river's is fixed, but you can swerve your boat to avoid obstacles. Or if there is a diverging river, you can choose to paddle your boat to that direction if you wish.
I can't pretend I know what it's like to be lgbt or neurodivergent, but most therapists will tell anyone regardless of background that you can only change what you can change. You cannot change the past or control the future, but how you react to the present and the present itself is what you can control.