How Can I Become Happy?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Hello,

I just turned 20 last month and I am a single male. I am in the middle of my second year of college and I enjoy what I am studying (Chinese major & Business Administration minor). I am, physically, rather healthy. I try to eat well and I have been practicing martial arts (kung fu) for over two years now, which is physically very demanding. My life is pretty structured, at least this semester it is – I wake up at 8am, go to class, go to work, go train (kung fu), and then come home (usually around 8pm). Then I have to whip up some kind of dinner and do homework basically until I go to sleep. I usually get around 5-6 hours of sleep a night, and I often doze off on the bus or sometimes during larger lecture classes (I always go to all of my classes, unlike my roomies :dubious: ).

I feel that I am not mentally healthy. I feel cynical about many facets of life in general; I also often feel that I am somehow “odd” in relation to the majority of people on my campus. I simply feel like a lot of the things other students do are either pointless, absurd, or… it’s difficult to describe. I can sort of equate it with the stereotypical things a “non-conformist” would say about the “sheep,” though that’s not how I view myself and I try to avoid slapping labels on anyone, myself included. It’s just difficult not to judge when, to me, some fundamental behavior just seems so absurd, like people wearing your arbitrary [Insert brand name logo] t-shirts (why not wear a shirt that just says “I paid $40 for this t-shirt, Tell me I am Cool!”, or something similar), or girls that dress like (excuse the language) complete sluts. Basically, when I walk around campus, this will sometimes go through my mind: “Stop judging people. Why should I waste my time caring about what other people are wearing, of all things?” Yet I still judge… why? :smack: I don’t think that I am that insecure! :stuck_out_tongue:

Some of my attitude has been derived from my experiences with people who fit into that generalization. For instance, while backpacking by myself through Western Europe last summer (after saving up for over a year with my PT job), I would cringe every time I saw your so-called “Ugly American.” I could spot these people 300 feet away simply because of how they dressed and acted (shouting English at someone who doesn’t speak English, for example). One of the worst things I encountered was at Dachau concentration camp in southern Germany. While I was walking around the grounds, in disbelief at the events that unfolded there, I overheard a couple of American girls chatting about what they had bought in Munich and where they wanted to go out and get drunk that night. A few minutes later I saw an American guy who was about my age; he read a plaque describing how easily prisoners were shot if they stepped too close to the fences. His response? “<chuckle>, That sucks!!” I just stared at him. All I could think was, “Who the hell are these people?” But I digress…

I often find myself, when I am alone especially, or sometimes even when speaking with my parents, with an emotionless face. Sometimes my voice will even be “dull” or sound uninterested. I’ve spoken with my mom on the phone, for instance, and she will ask me what’s the matter just because of the calm, “disconnected” tone in my voice, but all I can say is “Nothing.” It’s quite a strange predicament, because not only is there nothing especially bad going on in my life right now (I mean… hell… I live with my two friends, attend college, have food, a computer, a car, a job, etc), but I sincerely want to be happy… it’s just that I don’t know exactly how to go about it. I will sometimes feel “detatched” or “hollow”, yet I don’t know how to fix this. I can literally look in the mirror and ask myself “Why am I not happy right now?” but not have an answer. I feel almost like I have some sort of chemical imbalance. I don’t think having not dated for over five years now is contributing to the solution, either… :o

I suppose I should mention that I’m not always like this; sometimes I will be out with friends or at a school-related function and I feel perfectly happy. I’m not suicidal or wholly depressed, which is why I’m at such a loss here… I think a relatively accurate word for me is frustrated. I also am thinking that all of this is a combination of issues, because I can be extremely happy but still have that problem of being cynical about things. Is it common for people to feel this way at my age, especially if they are in college? I originally intended to post a very long message discussing some of my views in more detail with less focus on me, but I suppose I’ll just wait and see what kind of a response I get from you guys first and take it from there.

Here’s to being happy! :smiley:

Brian (in Gainesville, FL)

2

Find a hobby, girlfriend… or a goat. :smiley:

I don’t think you are mentally unhappy, just that you think to much. You need to hang out more, relax… you seem a little uptight. The way you react to the tourists in Germany seems to show that you aren’t used to dealing with other youths your age. Young people say a lot of stupid stuff.

Get some friends, get drunk a few times, and do stupid things. :slight_smile:

3

Never lose the child inside of you.

When away from the office…act like a 5 year old. I swear it is the best stress relief in the world.

4

Dear Brian in Gainesville:

You are 20. I think it is healthy, normal, socially productive, spiritually necessary, and inevitable that you at your age should feel a hell of a lot of tension between yourself and your social environment. That you should spend a hell of a lot of emotional spiritual and mental energy on sorting out how much of that tension is due to something being wrong with you and how muchn is due to something being wrong with your social environment, and what you’re going to do about it either way.

There may or may not be “something wrong with you” but if there is, it isn’t that you’re going through this.

Out of the intensity of this, this that you are currently feeling, can come great things, life-definining things for you and even society-defining things for the rest of us. The native American Indians used to send folks your age off to go have a vision.

You are joining adulthood but you neither have to join it as it is nor have it accept you as you are. You bring with you what you bring, and you will judge yourself, more than any of us ever judge you, with regards to your fitness to be among the grownups for real and for keeps.

Keep it serious and deep.

5

It sounds like you’ve entered your period of obligatory third decade angst.
Keep studying, keep working out continue to eat right. If you must, write poetry, but never allow anyone to read it.
If you ignore it, it will go away, or not. Time moves on and life will distract you from this mental puberty, and like emerging from puberty, you’ll become an adult.

6

I can’t say how you can become happy, but I can share that when I feel that sort of judgmental cynicism in myself, it means I need to do something to reconnect with people. Not friends or relatives, just strangers. It’s a good time to volunteer. Help others. Learn about them. I might find that the people in the slutty clothes or expensive t-shirts are hurting. I may find that they are silly twerps. I never know until you try to connect.

The guy at the plaque, for example, might have been panicking inside. Some people, me included, try to make a joke when we are horrified. I had a friend who would giggle all the way through the saddest movies you’ve ever seen. Her laughter sounded exactly like mocking laughter, but it was to prevent herself from crying. She knew she did it and simply couldn’t stop, even though people thought her callous.

I am not saying that dude was doing that. He might just have been shallow and callous. When I’m feeling empathetic (like I am right now) I can see other possibilities. When I’m feeling cynical (like I am too often) I can’t, and other people seem more like obstacles or rats in a cage rather than human beings.

7

Proof: “We must laugh before we are happy for fear of dying without laughing at all.” Jean de La Bruyere (1645-1696)

8

Thanks for all of the replies, everyone. I was hoping I didn’t come off as too angsty… and I would like to say that, after posting this message, I actually felt better :smiley: Going to bed for now, though!

9

Wow. Are you me? Sure sounds like it.

I’ve had this same feeling on and off for the last few years (FWIW I’m 18 and a college freshman). I actually feel that I’m beginning to come back out of that shell again at this particular point in my life.

IME the best thing is to go out, interact, spend time with people (but not more time than you’re comfortable with – this will ebb and flow; since most of the interesting stuff on a college campus seems to happen at night, you can always use the “I need to get to bed, I’m tired/I have a class in the morning/I have a test to study for” excuse once you’ve had enough), and on a subconscious level within yourself (1) want to be happy and (2) be ready to be happy. There’s really nothing I can say that can explain what I mean better than that, except for this: don’t dwell on it. Don’t pray for happiness to come. Just put yourself in a place (emotionally, physically and mentally) in which you’re ready for happiness to come find you. When the time comes, it will find you. It will leave you again when the time is appropriate, and it will come back again when the time is right to do so, and so on and so forth.

That’s my two cents, anyway. Good luck.

10

Hi Brian, this is Dung Beetle, also in Gainesville, though not a student. We do have a Doper round here who is a student at UF, so you see, they’re not all that bad. :smiley:
I just wanted to tell you I liked your T-shirt idea, and I’m sure posting here will make you feel lots better. It works for me.

11

I think that probably most of us have gone through that phase, where we began to enter adulthood, and looked around us seriously for maybe the first time, and our conclusion was “holy crap, these people are morons!” Well, maybe not most of us, because if those we see as morons had that revelation, they’d not act the way they do. In National Lampoon’s “Deteriorata”, there is a wonderful phrase: “A walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet.” It’s true.

The older you get, the more of it you see. It can be quite crushing, if you let it. I guess the only way to prevent it from crushing you is to be the best kind of person you know how, and don’t live up to that stereotype. Don’t be what you see. Be what you are comfortable with. If you can say “I haven’t contributed another degree of moronitude to the world” then you are doing the most that anyone could hope for. You will eventually be recognized for it by someone, and appreciated. But not now, your peers are too busy being young people. They’ll get over it, or they’ll get old and not stop with the shallowness and stupidity, and be the kind of people who make some of us ashamed to belong to the same (human) race as them. Just don’t be like them. That’ll bring some happiness into your life.