Musing on the Point of Musing

I keep writing this blog.  I keep returning to a small number of topics, looking at them from different views but generally bashing away at the same few themes.  I would say those themes are happiness, tolerance, and the questioning of assumptions.  Basically I am trying to help people be happier by questioning their negative views, trying to open minds to other ways of thinking and understanding, and trying to demonstrate that there are good reasons to be happy and optimistic about the world.

My thesis is basically that it is possible to make yourself happier.  To do this you must open yourself up to other ways of looking at things.  This makes you a more tolerant and understanding person.  This makes you a more compassionate person.  Being more compassionate makes you happier.  Happier people tend to be more grateful and optimistic, and more open.  This then loops around in a circle.  There are other versions of the circle (e.g. openness - learning techniques for happiness - happiness - compassion - tolerance - openness) but once you get on the circle it tends to keep going round.

The hardest part of this circle is getting on it.  It takes a certain amount of faith, that it is at least worth trying to see if you can be more happy by trying something different than your habits.  Or even more, that it is possible to start this process.  Many people believe that they are simply who they are and always will be.  The second hardest part is keeping the momentum going, as with all movements there is friction that must be overcome by putting energy into the system.

My musing today is first whether this is astonishingly arrogant of me?  I'm just a guy, who do I think I am to be telling other people what they should do with their lives?  After all, if there is something I hate, it is being told what to do.  I know I'm pretty smart.  I know I've had more motivation than most to investigate happiness because of my bipolar disorder.  I know I've had a very large amount of time giving advice to people in difficult situations.  I know that I have a psychology degree and am fascinated by how people work.  I know that I am certain that I have made myself happier through this process.

On the other hand, I'm not an enlightened Buddhist monk.  I am not a trained psychotherapist.  I'm not Jesus.  I am not a saint.  Anyone who knows me is aware that I can be a thundering jackass.  Who the hell do I think I am?

Well, isn't helping other people to be happy what we should be doing?  Don't we all know that what we should do is try in our own way to make the world a better place?  I think I know some things that can do that.  If I can live a happy, beautiful life and maybe shift a few other people a little in that direction isn't that not just a worthy thing, but a beautiful thing in itself?  Wouldn't it be wrong if I didn't try?  Wouldn't it be true that if all of us learned how to be happy, and learned how to help other people to be happy it would be just about the best thing possible?

In the end, isn't it better to be a little like this guy, Jeremy Gilley, who with no qualifications had a crazy and beautiful idea that was essentially certain to fail, but went for it anyway, and has consequently saved thousands of lives and brought massive buckets of hope into the world.  I beg of you to watch this video.  Please, please, please watch this.

I have been wondering what this blog is for.  On one hand it lets me express my views on topics.  On another it lets people who care about me check up on how I am doing, which I think is perhaps the most common use of this blog.  To a certain extent it then doesn't really matter what I say.  Perhaps I make people think?  Is that a good thing?  I hope so, but as I have expressed before, that doesn't really matter if it doesn't change what people do.  Has any of these 243 posts actually got someone to change what they do?  Have I convinced anyone of anything?  I think probably one or two people a little bit, a very small bit.

In the past I was someone who would have dismissed Jeremy Gilley.  I would have dismissed the idea of being able to help make people happy.  I would have thought that it wasn't worth trying to understand people who I thought were wrong.  I would have thought being compassionate was largely opening up oneself to pain.  I would have thought that you were stuck being who you are, and that I was better than most people.

I don't think that way anymore.  I'm not sure I'm a good person, but I am a better person.  Being a better person has made me a happier person.  I have jumped on the wheel and I am trying to keep it moving.  Even if I fail at convincing anyone of anything, I would much rather be a bit more like Jeremy Gilley and fail than successfully convince people to be like the person I used to be.

I believe that may be the most convincing argument I have.