1、How to live unhappily ever afterI just want to be happy.I cant think of another phrase capable of causing more misery and permanent unhappiness. With the possible exception of, Honey, Im in love with your youngest sister.Yet at first glance, it seems so guileless. Children just want to be happy. So
2、do puppies. Happy seems like a healthy, normal desire. Like wanting to breathe fresh air or shop only at Whole Foods.But I just want to be happy is a hole cut out of the floor and covered with a rug. Because once you say it, the implication is that youre not. The I just want to be happy bear trap is
3、 that until you define precisely, just exactly what happy is, you will never feel it. Whatever being happy means to you, it needs to be specific and also possible. When you have a blueprint for what happiness is, lay it over your life and see what you need to change so the images are more aligned.St
4、ill, this recipe of defining happiness and fiddling with your life to get it will work for some people but not for others. I am one of the others. I am not a happy person. There are things that do make me experience joy. But joy is a fleeting emotion, like a very long sneeze. A lot of the time what
5、I feel is, interested. Or I feel melancholy. And I also frequently feel tenderness, annoyance, confusion, fear, hopelessness. It doesnt all add up to anything I would call happiness. But what Im thinking is, is that so terrible?I know a physicist who loves his work. People mistake his constant focus
6、 and thought with unhappiness. But hes not unhappy. Hes busy. I bet when he dies, there will be a book on his chest. Happiness is a treadmill of a goal for people who are not happy by nature. Being an unhappy person does not mean you must be sad or dark. You can be interested, instead of happy. You
7、can be fascinated instead of happy.The barrier to this, of course, is that in our super-positive society, we have an unspoken zero-tolerance policy for negativity. Beneath the catchall umbrella of negativity is basically everything that isnt super-positive. Seriously, who among us is having a Great!
8、 day every day? Who feels 不快乐也无妨“我只想过得快乐。 ”我无法想出有其他语言能比这句话更让人陷入痛苦而永久的哀伤。可能有一个例外：“亲爱的，我爱上你的小妹妹了。 ”然而第一眼看上去，这句话是如此诚实。孩子们只想过得快乐。小狗也是如此。快乐看起来是一种健康、平常的欲望。就像希望呼吸新鲜空气或只在全食超市购物一样。但“我只想过得快乐”这句话其实是在地上挖出来又用地毯盖上了的一个洞。因为一旦你说了这句话，其实就意味着你不快乐。 “我只想过得快乐”隐含的意思是，在你准确定义“快乐”是什么之前，你永远不会感到快乐。不管快乐对你意味着什么，都需要是具体且可能实现的。当你心中对
9、快乐有一幅蓝图时，请将它铺展在生活中，了解你需要做出何种变化，才能让这幅图画更符合你的期望。但是，这份定义快乐、掌控生活以获得快乐的处方对某些人管用却对另一些人不管用。我就是另一些人中的一员。我不是一个快乐的人。有些事确实让我感到快乐。但快乐是一种稍纵即逝的情绪，就像一个长长的喷嚏。许多时候我感到的是，有趣。或者，我也会感到忧郁。我还经常感到亲切、烦恼、混乱、恐惧和绝望。它们加起来并不能叫做快乐。但我所想的是，这就那么可怕吗？我认识一位热爱工作的物理学家。人们误认为他持之以恒的专注和思考是不快乐。但他并非不快乐。他很忙碌。我猜当他去世时，胸口上会摆着一本书。对于本性不快乐的人来说，快乐是单调乏
10、味的目标，身为不快乐的人，并不意味着你必须悲伤或阴郁。你可以兴致盎然但不快乐。你也可以情醉神迷但不快乐。当然，这样做的障碍是，在我们这个超积极的社会中，有一项不成文的负面情绪零容忍政策。在无所不包的负面情绪之伞下，基本Terrific, thanks! all the time?Anger and negativity have their uses, too. Instead of trying to alleviate some of the uncomfortable and unpleasant emotions you feel by trying to be positive, t
11、ry being negative instead. Seriously, try it sometime. This will help you get in touch with how you actually feel: I feel hopeless and fat and stupid. And like a failure for feeling this way. And trying to be positive and upbeat makes me feel angry and feeling angry makes me feel like I am broken.If
12、 thats how you feelhowever you feelthen you have a base line, you have established a real solid floor of reference. Sometimes just giving yourself permission to feel any emotion without judgment or censorship can lessen the intensity of those negative emotions. Almost like youre letting them out int
13、o the backyard to run around and get rid of some of that energy.A corollary to the idea that we must all be happy and positive all the time is that we must all be healed. When I was 32, somebody I loved died on a plastic-covered twin mattress at a Manhattan hospital. His death was not unexpected and
14、 I had prepared myself years in advance, as though studying for a degree. When he died, I was as stunned as if he had been killed by a grand piano falling from the top of a building. I was fully unprepared.I did not know what to do with my physical self. It took me about a year to stop thinking, mad
15、ly, I might somehow meet him in my sleep. Once I finally believed he was gone, I began the next stage: waiting. Waiting to heal. This lasted several years.The truth about healing is that heal is a television word. Someone close to you dies? You will never heal. What will happen is, for the first few
16、 days, the people around you will touch your shoulder and this will startle you and remind you to breathe. You will feel as though you will soon be dead from natural causes; the weight of the grief will be physical and very nearly unbearable.Eventually, you will shower and leave the house. Maybe in
17、a year you will see a movie. And one day somebody will say something and it will cause you to laugh. And you will clamp your hand over your mouth because you laughed and that 囊括了所有并非超积极的情绪。但说真的，我们中谁每天都过得“很棒！”呢？谁会每时每刻都感觉“太好了，谢谢！”呢？愤怒和负面情绪也自有它们的作用。与其“努力变得积极”来减轻某些不舒服和不快的情绪，不如试着变得消极。说真的，偶尔尝试一下。这将帮你了解自己的
18、真实感受：“我感到自己很绝望、很胖、很蠢。这种感觉让我觉得很失败。努力变得积极乐观让我生气，而生气让我感到伤心。 ”如果这是你的感觉不管感觉如何 那么你已经有了一个底线，你已经建立了一个真实坚固的参考底线。有时让自己不加判断或审视地感受任何情绪，可以减轻这些负面情绪的强度。就好像你把它们放到后院奔跑，去除了其中的某些能量一样。那种我们必须每时每刻都快乐积极的观点的一个推论是，我们都必须被“治疗” 。当我32 岁时，我爱的某个人在曼哈顿一家医院的单人病床上离开了人世。他的去世并不是意外，我几年前就开始做心理准备，就像去攻读一个学位一样。但当他离去的时候，我还是很震惊，感觉他彷佛是被楼顶掉下的三角
19、钢琴砸死的。我没有做好完全的准备。我不知道如何应对现实。我花了大约一年时间才停止疯狂的思念。我总是会梦见他。当我最终相信他走了之后，我开始进入了下一个阶段：等待。等待治愈。这一阶段持续了数年之久。关于治愈的真相是，治愈只是一个在电视中说说的词汇而已。你亲近的某个人去世了？那你永远不会痊愈。起初几天发生的事情是，周围的人拍拍你的肩膀，让你从中惊醒，记起还要呼吸。你会感觉自己就像快要自然死亡一样，悲伤的重量是实实在在的，几乎无法承受。最后，你会冲个澡，走出屋子。可能一年之laugh will break your heart, it will feel like a betrayal. How c
20、an you laugh?In time, to your friends, you will appear to have recovered from your loss. All that really happened, youll think, is that the hole in the center of your life has narrowed just enough to be concealed by a laugh. And yet, you might feel a pressure for it to be true. You might feel that e
21、nough time has passed now, that the hole at the center of you should not be there at all.But holes are interesting things. As it happens, we human beings are able to live just fine with many holes of many sizes and shapes. Pleasure, love, compassion, fulfillment; these things do not leak out of hole
22、s of any size. So we can be filled with holes and loss and wide expanses of unhealed geographyand we can also be excited by life and in love and content at the exact same moment.This is among the oldest, deepest, most primal truths: The facts of life may be, at times, unbearably painful. But the cor
23、e, the bones of life are generous beyond all reason or belief. Those things which ought to kill us do not. This should be taken as encouragement to continue.The truth about healing is that you dont need to heal to be whole. And by whole, I mean damaged, missing pieces of who you were, your heartmiss
24、ing what feels like some of your most important parts. And yet, not missing any part of you at all. Being, in truth, larger than you were before.Human experience weighs more than human tissue.后，你会去看场电影。然后某一天，某人说了句什么，引起你发笑了。你会用手捂住嘴，因为你笑了，但这个笑让你伤心，它感觉就像背叛。你怎么能笑呢？总有那么一天，在朋友们看来，你已经从失去亲友的痛苦中恢复过来了。那时你会想，实
25、际上发生的是，你生活中心的那个洞缩小了，小到足以被一个笑容掩盖。但或许你仍然会感觉到这个洞真实存在的压力，又或许，你会认为现在已度过了“足够长的”时间，你生活中心的那个洞应该完全消失了。但这种洞是很有意思的东西。事实证明，我们人类能带着许多大小形状不同的这样的洞，生活得很好。快乐、爱、同情、满足，这些情绪从任何大小的洞中都不会流失。因此我们可以填补空洞和损失，以及未治愈的广袤心域同时我们也能为生活感到兴奋，感受到爱与满足。这是最古老、深层和原始的事实：生活的真相有时可能就是无法承受的痛苦。但生活的核心和支柱比任何理由或信念都要宽广。那些本应置我们于死地的东西事实上并未得逞。这应该被看作继续活下去的动力。关于治疗的真相是，你不需要治疗就能恢复完整。所谓的完整，是指你感觉曾经的自己、你的心因为受到伤害而成为失落的碎片，你感觉彷佛失去了自己最重要的部分，但事实上你并未丢失你的任何一个部分。实际上，你比之前更加强大了。人类的心灵体验比人体的组织更为重要。
