Relativity
How do we recognize happiness when we experience it? The simple answer is that we know it feels good. How do we know it feels good? We know that happiness feels good is because we compare it to other situations in our lives that feel bad and therefore the “good feeling” feels good relative to the “bad feeling”. If we did not have challenging or painful experiences we would not recognize happiness. If we are in a state of permanent happiness we would not know that it was happiness because we would not have anything to compare it to (and therefore it would not be feel like the happiness that we are seeking). It would just be neutral.
Therefore, as a result of living in a universe where this relativity exists along with the existence of more than one dimension (good feelings cannot exist without bad feelings, up without down, back without front, etc) permanent happiness not physically possible (or to put it another way, permanently feeling good is not physically possible). More importantly, you don’t want permanent happiness because it does NOT feel “good” – it can only feel “neutral” – forever.
Therefore humans have been designed to move back and forth between feeling good and feeling bad (and everything on the continuum in between) as opposed to permanently feeling good (which, again, is not physically possible because it would mean feeling neutral). This is life. Embrace the good and the bad – because permanently neutral is much worse.
Next article in this series: “The Purpose Of Life – Equilibrium“