I have always thought that Happiness is not something that come from outside. ( and, the verb “come” is used in a conditional tense).
Yet, we are addicted to the condition of being “happy” because the society has inoculated this idea like a Chinese drop until we find ourselves in the situation of being drugged and left in this terrible condition of a fake happiness. We have to admit that our present is so materialistic-oriented and it is so difficult to overpass it. We attend all kind of masterclasses of personal development, of coaching in order to find it, to listen to their needs actually, not ours. And we, finally, discover that - as you said - “ Happiness is not delivered; it is assembled…. Happiness is not a reward; it’s an experiment…. It’s a mood that must be cultivated” from inside and not wait to be taught or given by somebody else….
I agree that the modern obsession with “happiness” often feels more like a societal medication prescription than a personal pursuit. The metaphor of the “Chinese drop” is striking, it captures the insidious way external expectations seep into our consciousness over time, shaping our desires without us even realising it.
You’re right, the commodification of happiness (through self-help programmes, coaching, or even material achievements) often distracts us from the deeper, more personal work of cultivating joy and contentment from within. As you noted, the real challenge lies in resisting these external pressures and rediscovering our own needs, not the ones we’ve been conditioned to chase.
Happiness is a process that allows for curiosity, trial, and error. Thank you, Iuliana, for always adding such rich layers to the conversation!
I wonder who started this myth that happiness is a final destination that you can reach if you do x,y,z which sound the same for everyone - lose weight, be rich and get married? This is the perfect piece to reflect upon before the end of the year, with a beautiful lesson to take with us into the energy of the new year! You translate feelings into words! 🤍
People imitate one another, hence ‘happiness’ has become a one-size-fits all kind of thing. We forget that everything — success, love, depression, misery, pain, emotion — is a personal and evolving journey. We live with checklists (because they give us comfort), and under the pressure of society, without embracing an individual and flexible approach to personal fulfillment.
Thank you for your reflections, they are always priceless!
Oh wow. Aren’t you incendiary… heretical? I might say.
How you’ve weaved and conjured — the secret movement of imbuing the world around you with joy. You do carry the sun; are you trying to incite joy, Tamara?
In this post, I feel a description of the real, felt experience of happiness. Almost austere in its simplicity, but a holistic description of the various guises of happiness. From your words, I consider now that my influence on happiness might be the closest experience we have to true freedom.
Oh how you’ve collapsed complexity with coherence. That you somehow summed up “all of it — love, connection, happiness” this is the Eros I am still trying to understand. The mystery of being — exploring those three things is everything to me. To enjoy love, connection and happiness, to one’s core without “outsourcing” it to others is a message of immense importance (at least, this is what I feel)— particularly if we are to arrest the descent into isolation, anxiety and disconnection.
And knowing some of your future work! Oh how you are sketching out something great here.
I have had the privilege of reading two future pieces: Erotic Decisions and Private lives (if I ever lament that I didn’t read Tamara sooner, I hope I remember this observation) and the overlap is incredible. Today, I was trying to capture pieces from Private Lives and when I hit this quote… I stopped short. The pull, the tug of this article was too much.
This is from Private Lives: “we began to confuse joy with its documentation. Actually… not just confuse, but conflate. Happiness now requires an audience, or at the very least, a camera roll.” I read this article and just stopped trying to consider responding to the present — instead I’ve come back to this post post.
Like some sort of shaman communing with culture to diagnose (I think of this juxtaposition to an empiricist — like a physician— looking to quantify. Tamara’s gift is more holistic; the whole picture is in view… through some sorcery no doubt ;-) ).
Coming back to Why Happiness is an Inside Job, what I read here in this piece — as well as future posts — is a healer’s look at the modern maladies that derange us, the performance of modern life that keeps us incoherent. With stunning insight, these words help to excise the spectacle of our online lives from the actual felt experience of being and becoming that we should all be aspiring to.
And it isn’t just a dour, depressing recognition that none of the happiness you were promised is ever possible. A simple recipe (foreshadowing) for wresting back happiness from the illusion, is also somehow delivered here in this post. Tamara posits simply “You’re the chef of this operation. Accept that, and suddenly, life tastes a whole lot better.” That’s it. That’s where happiness lives — the acknowledgement that when your basic needs are met (for real suffering exists in scarcity of those basic needs that provide for ongoing homeostasis) your happiness is far more available if you just acknowledge that you can’t control for it. You can’t grasp at it. Season your day to taste. Don’t expect someone to show up with a banquet. And perhaps, real happiness awaits. Indeed a person with a posture that doesn’t grasp for happiness somehow starts finding happiness attracted to them — like they are a celestial body with a gravity of its own.
I for one enjoy the absurd choice Tamara challenges us to take on — to choose being happy. As messy as happiness might be, it is closer than perhaps we were “trained” to believe… if only we can just let go.
What a marvel of a response, and I read it as one does a sacred marginalia, not an annotation, but a parallel text.
Your insight into happiness as freedom struck me with particular force because yes, perhaps it is the last frontier of autonomy? Not the manicured, Photoshopped mirage of it, but the quiet, independent act of deciding not to hand over the keys to your inner world. To anyone. Not to the algorithm, not to the approval of a lover, not to the ambient discontent of our commodified age.
And yet you add another layer I hadn’t named so clearly: this idea of gravitational happiness. The paradox that joy is not won by pursuit, but by orientation. That the people who seem happiest are rarely the ones scanning the horizon for it, but those who, having dropped the desperate performance of fulfilment, somehow become radiant. Orbital. Pulling others into their field not through effort, but through equilibrium.
There’s a reason, perhaps, that the oldest spiritual traditions didn’t speak of happiness, but of serenity. Of a mind that doesn’t constantly bargain with the world for reward. You’re right to call this heresy in the current climate, where affect is currency and selfhood a curated feed, but maybe that’s exactly what it takes: a refusal to monetise joy. A rebellion by joying.
If I ever do become the shaman you so generously conjure, I hope I never lose that edge of empiricism, the good kind obviously, the kind that insists on checking whether the recipe of one’s life still includes salt, sunlight, solitude, and something unnameable you picked up from a dream.
Thank you, Adam, truly! For reading beyond the page, and for showing me what I didn’t even know I’d planted.
Yours, seasoning the absurd with just a little more grace.
The holy books of many a culture all went through a dialogue with early thinkers pushing and prodding, adding and subtracting to the source insight. Until the gravity pulled too many and the ideas became institutionalized, now ossified, dogmatic and beyond review.
Whether you know it or not, your shamanic skills are incredible. With some empiricism (the good kind) flowing through your pen you might, perhaps, be outlining a new sacred text… recipe book.
I was two posts in and realized this very quickly. It is much appreciated and quite clearly one of those unique elements of your prose. Quite refreshing.
So much truth in every sentence! I 🤎 this!
Thank you so much, Otilia!
I have always thought that Happiness is not something that come from outside. ( and, the verb “come” is used in a conditional tense).
Yet, we are addicted to the condition of being “happy” because the society has inoculated this idea like a Chinese drop until we find ourselves in the situation of being drugged and left in this terrible condition of a fake happiness. We have to admit that our present is so materialistic-oriented and it is so difficult to overpass it. We attend all kind of masterclasses of personal development, of coaching in order to find it, to listen to their needs actually, not ours. And we, finally, discover that - as you said - “ Happiness is not delivered; it is assembled…. Happiness is not a reward; it’s an experiment…. It’s a mood that must be cultivated” from inside and not wait to be taught or given by somebody else….
I agree that the modern obsession with “happiness” often feels more like a societal medication prescription than a personal pursuit. The metaphor of the “Chinese drop” is striking, it captures the insidious way external expectations seep into our consciousness over time, shaping our desires without us even realising it.
You’re right, the commodification of happiness (through self-help programmes, coaching, or even material achievements) often distracts us from the deeper, more personal work of cultivating joy and contentment from within. As you noted, the real challenge lies in resisting these external pressures and rediscovering our own needs, not the ones we’ve been conditioned to chase.
Happiness is a process that allows for curiosity, trial, and error. Thank you, Iuliana, for always adding such rich layers to the conversation!
Your replies are so elaborated…. I admire this quality of yours
I wonder who started this myth that happiness is a final destination that you can reach if you do x,y,z which sound the same for everyone - lose weight, be rich and get married? This is the perfect piece to reflect upon before the end of the year, with a beautiful lesson to take with us into the energy of the new year! You translate feelings into words! 🤍
People imitate one another, hence ‘happiness’ has become a one-size-fits all kind of thing. We forget that everything — success, love, depression, misery, pain, emotion — is a personal and evolving journey. We live with checklists (because they give us comfort), and under the pressure of society, without embracing an individual and flexible approach to personal fulfillment.
Thank you for your reflections, they are always priceless!
Oh wow. Aren’t you incendiary… heretical? I might say.
How you’ve weaved and conjured — the secret movement of imbuing the world around you with joy. You do carry the sun; are you trying to incite joy, Tamara?
In this post, I feel a description of the real, felt experience of happiness. Almost austere in its simplicity, but a holistic description of the various guises of happiness. From your words, I consider now that my influence on happiness might be the closest experience we have to true freedom.
Oh how you’ve collapsed complexity with coherence. That you somehow summed up “all of it — love, connection, happiness” this is the Eros I am still trying to understand. The mystery of being — exploring those three things is everything to me. To enjoy love, connection and happiness, to one’s core without “outsourcing” it to others is a message of immense importance (at least, this is what I feel)— particularly if we are to arrest the descent into isolation, anxiety and disconnection.
And knowing some of your future work! Oh how you are sketching out something great here.
I have had the privilege of reading two future pieces: Erotic Decisions and Private lives (if I ever lament that I didn’t read Tamara sooner, I hope I remember this observation) and the overlap is incredible. Today, I was trying to capture pieces from Private Lives and when I hit this quote… I stopped short. The pull, the tug of this article was too much.
This is from Private Lives: “we began to confuse joy with its documentation. Actually… not just confuse, but conflate. Happiness now requires an audience, or at the very least, a camera roll.” I read this article and just stopped trying to consider responding to the present — instead I’ve come back to this post post.
Like some sort of shaman communing with culture to diagnose (I think of this juxtaposition to an empiricist — like a physician— looking to quantify. Tamara’s gift is more holistic; the whole picture is in view… through some sorcery no doubt ;-) ).
Coming back to Why Happiness is an Inside Job, what I read here in this piece — as well as future posts — is a healer’s look at the modern maladies that derange us, the performance of modern life that keeps us incoherent. With stunning insight, these words help to excise the spectacle of our online lives from the actual felt experience of being and becoming that we should all be aspiring to.
And it isn’t just a dour, depressing recognition that none of the happiness you were promised is ever possible. A simple recipe (foreshadowing) for wresting back happiness from the illusion, is also somehow delivered here in this post. Tamara posits simply “You’re the chef of this operation. Accept that, and suddenly, life tastes a whole lot better.” That’s it. That’s where happiness lives — the acknowledgement that when your basic needs are met (for real suffering exists in scarcity of those basic needs that provide for ongoing homeostasis) your happiness is far more available if you just acknowledge that you can’t control for it. You can’t grasp at it. Season your day to taste. Don’t expect someone to show up with a banquet. And perhaps, real happiness awaits. Indeed a person with a posture that doesn’t grasp for happiness somehow starts finding happiness attracted to them — like they are a celestial body with a gravity of its own.
I for one enjoy the absurd choice Tamara challenges us to take on — to choose being happy. As messy as happiness might be, it is closer than perhaps we were “trained” to believe… if only we can just let go.
What a marvel of a response, and I read it as one does a sacred marginalia, not an annotation, but a parallel text.
Your insight into happiness as freedom struck me with particular force because yes, perhaps it is the last frontier of autonomy? Not the manicured, Photoshopped mirage of it, but the quiet, independent act of deciding not to hand over the keys to your inner world. To anyone. Not to the algorithm, not to the approval of a lover, not to the ambient discontent of our commodified age.
And yet you add another layer I hadn’t named so clearly: this idea of gravitational happiness. The paradox that joy is not won by pursuit, but by orientation. That the people who seem happiest are rarely the ones scanning the horizon for it, but those who, having dropped the desperate performance of fulfilment, somehow become radiant. Orbital. Pulling others into their field not through effort, but through equilibrium.
There’s a reason, perhaps, that the oldest spiritual traditions didn’t speak of happiness, but of serenity. Of a mind that doesn’t constantly bargain with the world for reward. You’re right to call this heresy in the current climate, where affect is currency and selfhood a curated feed, but maybe that’s exactly what it takes: a refusal to monetise joy. A rebellion by joying.
If I ever do become the shaman you so generously conjure, I hope I never lose that edge of empiricism, the good kind obviously, the kind that insists on checking whether the recipe of one’s life still includes salt, sunlight, solitude, and something unnameable you picked up from a dream.
Thank you, Adam, truly! For reading beyond the page, and for showing me what I didn’t even know I’d planted.
Yours, seasoning the absurd with just a little more grace.
The holy books of many a culture all went through a dialogue with early thinkers pushing and prodding, adding and subtracting to the source insight. Until the gravity pulled too many and the ideas became institutionalized, now ossified, dogmatic and beyond review.
Whether you know it or not, your shamanic skills are incredible. With some empiricism (the good kind) flowing through your pen you might, perhaps, be outlining a new sacred text… recipe book.
Hmmm… I begin to like the idea… tempting!
The trick is, not to write with that goal in mind. 🤭
Never do. I write with my heart only.
I was two posts in and realized this very quickly. It is much appreciated and quite clearly one of those unique elements of your prose. Quite refreshing.