I realized I felt the need to write this article based on a question I received from someone closest to me: “Why can’t I just be happy?” I stopped and thought about it. I realized that just when she was supposed to be happy, there was always a problem. Why was this the case? Why was there always a problem? Was there a reason for this? And I realized that my mind, too, was immediately lost in those questions.
Realizing this, I took a deep breath. That deep breath felt like drinking cold water on those questions. And with that, I asked myself each one, one by one. Why couldn’t she just be happy? Then I stopped and looked at myself. Was I truly happy? Or how could I be? Was it even possible? So many questions flooded my mind at that moment.
And as I felt like I was about to get lost in these questions again, I decided to observe my mind from a distance. I wanted to understand how my mind chooses to respond to these questions. Because our minds are like computers. From the moment we are born, they record every detail of our life and our experiences. It progresses by coding each of the responses we give to the events we experience, whether they were effective or not. And in this way, when faced with similar events, it immediately feels the need to review the experiences it has already coded.
Therefore, I took a step back, wondering what my mind was experiencing and how I could decipher these codes now. I began to observe that moment, my mind, as if watching myself on video. And I realized that my mind chose to get lost in those questions, entering a vicious cycle of asking more questions. I wondered why. Because overthinking would exhaust both me and itself, yet it still chose to do so. And I realized that my mind was searching for solutions to all these unanswered questions. Because there were no answers to any of them. And within this uncertainty, my mind was striving to find solutions.
At that moment, I chose to stop the video recording. I immediately took a deep breath. And this time, with a better understanding of why my mind was choosing to behave this way, I continued the imaginary video recording. This time, I asked my mind the questions in turn. Why couldn’t we be happy? Because I’d heard so many people around me say, “I can never be happy.” And I realized that these people, myself included, were always chasing happiness. It was as if happiness was an obligation. As if we weren’t living this life if we are not happy.
And with this realization, a new question arose in my mind. Why did we crave happiness so much, out of all the other emotions? These people who pursued happiness but couldn’t find it had one thing in common. They all frequently faced difficulties in their lives. And each of them reacted this way: Why me?
I continued my observation by asking myself these questions. Why were we only chasing happiness, and why were these bad things always happening to us? And then I realized that, in fact, bad things weren’t just happening to us. In this day and age, we have so much opportunity to observe others’ lives. Observing from afar how perfect everyone’s lives are and how happy everyone is… I actually came to this conclusion by observing the person who prompted me to write this article. Because while I witnessed how much she was truly struggling, her social media posts continued to surprise me. She was acting with the mindset that everyone was so happy, she was the only one who’s not happy, so she had to pretend to be happy.
And with that, another question was unlocked: Why do we pursue happiness? Because we all perceive happiness as a solution. Was it really so? Was happiness a solution? Should we respond to every event we experience with a sense of happiness? Losses, illnesses, separations, fights, celebrations… could we all feel a single emotion, and why were there so many bad things in the world?
I stopped my mind at that moment and told it, this is what living is like. What makes life meaningful lies in all these moments and emotions. And life is made up of opposites. There can be no happiness without sadness, no day without night, no light without darkness. And observing these opposites and adapting to their incompatibility was the first step in realizing how compatible they actually were…