What Can a Pessimist Teach You About Happiness?

The safest way of not being very miserable is not to expect to be very happy. (Schopenhauer) It is no use to ask an optimistic person how to be happy. It comes to them easily, they see the beauty of life, and they always see the silver lining around the clouds. They will tell you, just be happy! But unfortunately, it doesn´t work this way for everybody. So who should we ask how to be happy? Maybe we should try a pessimist, and I was thinking about Schopenhauer.

For the people who don´t know Schopenhauer, I think it is safe to say he is one of the more pessimistic philosophers. According to him, we are not simply rational beings who seek to know and understand the world, but we also desire and strive to obtain things from the world. Behind every striving is a painful lack of something, but obtaining this thing rarely makes us happy. Even if we manage to satisfy one desire, several more unsatisfied ones are ready to take their place. Or we become bored, aware that a life with nothing to desire is dull and empty. At no point will we arrive at a final and lasting satisfaction. ‘Life swings back and forth like a pendulum between pain and boredom.’ If Schopenhauer can tell something about happiness, it sure must be worthwhile.

Envy is natural to man; and still, it is at once a vice and a source of misery.

Schopenhauer

Envy is one of the most negative emotions and feelings we can experience because it condemns us to a state of permanent dissatisfaction, far from happiness. Comparing ourselves with others implies dedicating time and energy to an unsuccessful task in which we will almost always lose since we usually compare ourselves with those we think are richer, more capable, or happier. Schopenhauer offers some advice to avoid feeling envy: don’t pay attention to those who have something you do not, and think of how much misery that person whom one envies actually has. This may have some practical merit, but it seems to miss the real bit of envy. Envy is more than just a desire for something I do not possess. The desire to achieve or possess is not envy. Envy is a desire for something, it is a sense of injustice that you have it, and I do not. Envy is a moral judgment without the capacity to effectuate judgment. Envy is the settled conclusion that the world has gone wrong because you wrongfully possess something. Envy is the conclusion that you should not have that, and I should. The moral sense of injustice is coupled with a hatred, typically directed toward the one possessing the object. Schopenhauer has no good basis to believe that anything will be just. Therefore, the best advice he can give is to avoid the occasions that might provoke envy.

Life is an unpleasant business. I have resolved to spend mine reflecting on it.

Schopenhauer

It is interesting to hear a philosopher tell us not to overthink, but that is exactly what Schopenhauer tells us to do. He advises us not to think about the where, the why, and the ifs of things, but only the what. Abstract thinking and the concept of reason should not overtake your consciousness. Actually, what he proposes is what nowadays is called mindfulness. He tells us to devote the full power of our mind to perception, let ourselves sink into this. Let your conscious be filled with calm contemplation of the present and the natural object so that you lose yourself entirely in this object. And Schopenhauer tells us that life is an unpleasant business; the last thing we should do is believe that we are destined to find happiness in life rather than encounter suffering. If we believe the world owes us happiness, we are bound to be disappointed. When we do achieve whatever we think will make us happy, we will have new unfulfilled desires that will supersede the old ones. We will also feel resentment towards the obstacles that stand between us and the happiness we feel entitled to. Some people concentrate and externalize this resentment by setting a goal for a happy life that they know is unachievable on some level. Then, when it never materializes, they always have something other than themselves to point to and blame for why they aren’t happy.

All striving comes from lack, from a dissatisfaction with one’s condition, and is thus suffering as long as it is not satisfied, but no satisfaction is lasting; instead, it is only the beginning of a new striving. We see striving everywhere inhibited in many ways, struggling everywhere; and thus always suffering; there is no final goal of striving, and therefore no bounds or end to suffering.

Schopenhauer

That Buddhism influenced Schopenhauer should not be a surprise by now. With respect to desire, he also gives advice that is in line with Buddhistic philosophy. To be happy, we must limit our desires. Continuously wishing plunges us into a spiral of dissatisfaction that leads us to run after things that will never finish satisfying us because they generate new needs and desires. Therefore, one of the secrets to be happy is to desire less.

The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.

Schopenhauer

Schopenhauer advocates self-sufficiency. If our happiness depends on others, then it is not ours. This also means that we have to take our own responsibility for our happiness, we must not demand it from other people or governments, but we have to take care of it ourselves. For that reason, he encourages us to look inside for the reasons to be happy, not outside.

There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happy… So long as we persist in this inborn error… the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existence… hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.

Schopenhauer

Painful feelings do not necessarily come from `not having´, but from `wanting to have´ and yet not having . To avoid these painful feelings, we must eliminate the `wanting to have´ part. The bigger our ambitions about what we want to have and the higher our hopes of achieving them, the sharper the pain when we fail. If we cannot help wanting to have some things, then we should at least keep those wants within realistic and achievable proportions. Schopenhauer tells us that we should become suspicious of ourselves if we begin to expect a great amount of happiness waiting for us in the future; we are almost certainly being unrealistic. We not only have to limit our desires but also our expectations, because these are often the cause of unhappiness. Every expectation that is not fulfilled is reason for frustration. He tells us that we should focus on all the adverse possibilities, which would lead us to take precautions. We have to develop a more realistic vision that allows us to face the obstacles, instead of feeding false expectations that make us unhappy.

We should add very much to our happiness by a timely recognition of the simple truth that every man’s chief and real existence is in his own skin, and not in other people’s opinions […] To set much too high a value on other people’s opinion is a common error everywhere; an error, it may be, rooted in human nature itself, or the result of civilization, and social arrangements generally; but, whatever its source, it exercises a very immoderate influence on all we do, and is very prejudicial to our happiness.

Schopenhauer

If you only worry about other people´s opinions about you, you will never be happy. It is a thing you will never live up to, not to mention that people´s views can change quickly. And because different people have different opinions, you will never be able to satisfy everybody. Try to stay true to yourself, and let your happiness not be dependent on other people´s opinions.

We seldom think of what we have, but always of what we lack.

Schopenhauer

If we manage to resolve whatever is bothering us, we tend quickly to take it for granted and shift our focus to the next problem. And however small the next problem, we tend to magnify it to match the previous one. We rarely feel the benefit of the things we have while still having them: health, youth, and freedom, but only after we have lost them. It is important to value what we have, from health, family, and friends to material things. We must learn to look at life with a more positive view, feeling grateful for those blessings and taking advantage of them while we can. Starting the day, giving thanks for what we have is an excellent way to cultivate happiness. To appreciate the benefit of having things we also must recall what it was like not to have them. The fact that this happiness is based on the cessation of previous suffering is not incompatible with intense feelings of pleasure. The intensity of the pleasure is proportionate to the intensity of the suffering that preceded it.

To be happy, we must aim to eliminate pain and suffering from our lives, and to feel happy, we must also take the time to reflect on their absence.

According to Schopenhauer, suffering can’t be excluded from life, but it can be reduced by making sure no kind of suffering goes on for too long. Getting back to the image of the pendulum, a happy life would include enough success in fulfilling our desires that we are never in too much pain, but also enough failure to ensure that we are never too bored.

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