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I think, without a doubt, this
concept of happiness through a @F-L-O-W lens is MOST difficult and perplexing because of how I think of happiness as I see it
through the @F-L-O-W lens of reality.
There are many definitions of
happiness, and I would like to attempt to redefine it for the
purpose of your consideration, without discounting the others.
In @F-L-O-W, happiness, or a
felt and realized sense of satisfaction, along with the
accompanying states of bliss, flow, and values-based
alignment, or contentment, is key.
Now, the perplexing thing is that
@F-L-O-W Happiness is not always going to represent or produce
what most say is a "positive" psychology. I am convinced from
my own and the studied experiences of others, that true
happiness emerges from the properties, which combine to
produce it. This may result in the state of "happiness" to
have a negative connotation using a conventional frame of
reference.
People will say, "How can you be
happy if it produces a negative, alternate, or mismatched
state?"
Possibly in the conventional
meaning, we might not label this state as happiness. But let
me make the case for why happiness, or this being state of
values alignment can be negative and still be deemed happy.
Happiness, to me, is a "sort" of
contentment; it is an alignment...a felt sense of realized
satisfaction. It makes it OK to be depressed, to be
melancholy, to be angry, to be doubtful, and to drift, or
remain in states of negativity.
In fact, I will say this; I have
seen some people MOST happy when they are being negative,
confrontational, self-doubting, critical, or tough. It can be
a natural alignment for them to look for half-full glasses,
and to work on what we would call the negative side of
things rather than matching, or going along with others.
They are most content, most in alignment, when they are moving
against, or away from the status quo, or the conventional
thinking.
In physics and chemistry, we don't
label electrons BAD, because they have a negative charge? Bad
is a judgment, the negative charge is just what it is, a
negative charge. It's in our labeling and judgment that we
then call them good, or bad.
Therefore,
@F-L-O-W adds dimensions to
happiness, that to some would NOT fit the ideas they had about
happiness, because positive and negative are really just two
sides of the same thing, aren't they?
When we view the negative, opposite
the positive, or what we might call the mismatched dimensions
of reality, we do not preclude happiness being a continuum
that is labeled by some as good or bad. We must allow
ourselves to realize that an addict, living in squalor, might
actually be happier than we think.
This kind of perspective FORCES us
(in order to hold it as a possible reality), to think and feel
differently about the "nature" of reality and the people in
those realities which we would conventionally label as
'sadness' or unhappiness... When the very fact they are in
those realities is due to natural values alignment.
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