Grey clouds

There are grey clouds over Amsterdam, the temperature is low and so is my mood.
The weather is never bad if you are dressed for it, but some things do become less enjoyable. This weekend I will go sailing on the Klipper Avanti, but the weather report for Saturday says no wind and lots of rain. That is not ideal for a distance race. Therefore, I decided to sail only Sunday and stay home Saturday. When I made the decision I knew that something about me was a little different from the me of a week ago. Last week, I didn't check the weather report before going sailing, because it wouldn't have mattered. I knew that I would have lots of fun regardless of the weather. But this week something is different. The something is my mood, which is slightly lower than it used to be. In fact, I keep track of my mood mentally and it is currently at it's lowest on so far on this trip.

So why do I write to you about these uninteresting topics of my mood and the weather? It's not because I want you to feel sorry for me or send encouraging messages (please don't). It's because I'd like to have a little talk about happiness (well, a monologue really). I'd like to share my thoughts about happiness with you to tell you that I am alright, even when I am not happy and perhaps make you think about your own happiness.
First of all, happiness is an important topic to me. Happiness is important in the sense that it is something we all strive to achieve. At the same time, it is something that we rarely discuss, especially unhappiness is almost a taboo. When I hear talk about happiness, it is usually related to material things. Do money make people happy? Do nice vacations and few working hours make people happy? Yes, and yes, would be my replies, but with that you are still far from understanding what happiness is all about. A milestone in my understanding of happiness was the book "Viljen Til Sejr" (Will to win) by Arne Nielsson. It gave me a framework of words for describing happiness and it also attempts to describe a base case. I do not agree with everything in the book, most definitely not, but I did like the view on happiness expressed.

My interpretation of the framework is, that everyone (in countries with as much wealth/welfare as Denmark at least) is supposed to be happy and sad at a ratio similar to 5 to 2. This makes sense only when happiness is defined as a relative term. According to this framework you cannot break the scale and become permanently happy, because you are only happy when you are happier than your 'normal happiness'. In the book normality is described as a line, which you can be above or below. If something happens in your life that makes you permanently better off your line will move upwards on some imaginary static measure of happiness, but your perceived happiness will be the same. Every morning when you wake up, you will still be either above or below the line and you will still maintain a ratio of above to below.
But as with all frameworks it is a complicated and very complete way of trying to explain a phenomenon. You could simplify it into a way of thinking that goes something like: "There is no point in striving for a life of happiness, because you will always be sad sometimes". This also means that you should not fear unhappiness, because it is always temporary and no matter how sad your life situation in general becomes you will always have mornings where you wake up and feel happy. I realize that the last statement might not hold in all cases, but I assume some kind of minimum living standard, which I think it is unlikely that I will ever end up below.

Thus, my current low in mood is merely a necessary dip below the line, because I have been happy ever since I got here. When I get in a situation like this, I like to spend the time evaluating things, considering what makes me happy, my current and future situation and stuff like that. This time it yielded the following result: I need some time to recover from the month of Orionis introductions. Participating in events every second day and never getting enough sleep will have costs at some point I guess. It's been a lot of fun and it's been tough on the body at times, but what I'm feeling now is the mental effect. I puts a lot of pressure on me to meet so many new people all the time and yet not be close with anyone. Therefore, I will take a break from doing all the things you do, when above line (create dove costumes, dance all night on a Wednesday, try to fit in perfectly in a group of dutch students, etc.) and just lay low for a while. The same goes for work. I've been working hard to impress everyone, with every single thing I did. I've been doing everything to perfection, working late and frequently asking for more assignments. It's time to relax.

What makes me happy? I like to achieve things, I like to try new things and I like to be with close friends. These are things that I want, but not desperately so. I am not in any urgent need to become happy, as I explained I think this time is necessary as well. In fact, more than necessary, I like this time as well. It is not a time of depression, it is a time of low speed of life and I believe it can be just as enjoyable as the times when you are above the line. This is completely out of sync with the framework from the book, but I don't like things too simple.
The philosophy of a constant balance of happiness is basically unfit for me, because it lacks a goal. I know about myself that if I can't identify the goal of something, I will loose interest in a second. Therefore, I have added a goal to my philosophy of happiness. In explaining that, I think my theory of happiness is explained completely, as it looks today. My goal is to enjoy a life of happiness and unhappiness, by always being aware of my mood and acting in the best way I can with those moods. When I am happy, I will act natural and do all the things that I would not dare if I was unhappy and I will celebrate the feeling and the new experiences that usually follow from it. When I am unhappy, I will lay low and scrub away the less important things from my life, which are not making me happy. I will enjoy the perspective in both directions (backwards and forward in time). I will make sure to remember the happiness I just slowed down from and I will take a look at my expectations for the future, so I know what interesting things lie in wait for me or so I can change my course in time if I find that I would rather do something else.

So when can you expect the next happy post? I have no clue. I've been trying to predict my happiness swings, but found that to be absolutely impossible. But I can tell you that I have some nice things lined up, that I will definitely like. Firstly, there's the Klipper race Sunday. I look forward to seeing all of those sails up and feeling how such a big ship moves in the water will be an exciting new experience for me. At work I have just been included in a big project about music preferences in South Korea, and I think that is my chance to bring something home for my studies in Denmark. I have also discovered the fun of programming for real now; I've always been interested, and I have even attempted to learn Java once. At work I have learned a lot about VBA programming and now I am learning Flash in my spare time, because that's way more cool. My housing situation is suddenly looking great. I now have the whole apartment for myself and I have taken advantage of that by cleaning everything so it feels nice and fresh and I have also turned one of the rooms into a walk-in-closet (that's actually pretty sweet). So as you can see, there are lots of good things happening around me, and I'm not forgetting to enjoy them, even if I'm less happy than last week.
One last stray thought: if you feel uncomfortable about me braking the taboo of unhappiness try replacing happy with ecstatic (unhappy=not ecstatic) everywhere in this post. I think that will make everything good again.