Happiness and negative visualization

As many posts have made it abundantly clear, I walk around with my own quota of stress and unhappiness.  Life in the ashram for this hermit is not simply eternal bliss, especially in these tRump times!

The good thing is that many, many years ago, I figured that it will be very, very, very rare for a human to be stress-free and happy.  I mean truly stress-free and happy.  I have also concluded, to a large extent, that it is through unhappiness that we understand and appreciate happiness.  Happiness is something that emerges from and within the context of stress and unhappiness. I wrote, for instance, when thinking about Tolstoy's Anna Karenina:

Happy families are those that are able to be happy despite their own versions of unhappiness.

Thus, when a student remarks that I always look too damn happy in my office, he has no idea how much of a validation it is for me that happiness is like a gorgeous lotus in a dirty pond.  The stress causing agents are all around me and yet, according to that student, I look happy all the time.

Source

It seems like increasingly people are rushing around trying to figure out where that fountain of happiness is from which they can take some big gulps.

I want to tell them that the first step is a simple one that every ancient religion has stressed for ever.  And that first step?  Be careful about the frame of reference that you use.

“Our mind just happens to [pick] whatever reference point seems to be salient at the time, whatever reference point we happen to notice, and it tends to particularly [pick] reference points [involving people] who are doing better than us, which kind of sucks,” Santos observed.
But again, there are some ways to interrupt this process. One is to periodically force oneself to try living without the amazing thing one has become accustomed to. For instance, a summer night or two without air conditioning might make the rest of the season much more enjoyable.
Short of actually depriving oneself of something nice, engaging in short thought experiments can help, asking “What if I didn’t have this thing?” For instance, people might ask themselves: What if I didn’t have this house? Which friend or family member would I have to ask for help? This “negative visualization” might help them appreciate their home, even for its faults.

Try this exercise for "negative visualization": What if tRump were not the President?  You see how joyful it is? ;)