My Virtual Reading Room

Carolyn Hax chat from Feb. 21, 2025

You can scroll down to the "Mental Health" question, and I'll also post it below


Mental Health
Guest
Feb 21, 1:03 p.m.
Just a simple question if you can get to it: How do you make yourself happy - when the world demands you to be sad?

Carolyn Hax
Advice Columnist

Step 1, "the world" isn't demanding anything. It just is. It is neutral, there. Always has been and always will be.

Therefore, to see it as one thing or another is always, always a choice.

Therefore, this Step 1 is kind of modestly named, because it is The Step. When you can get yourself (mentally, emotionally) to the point of acknowledging and accepting the world as a neutral set of facts that is simply there, vs. some kind of coherent or rational actor with a set message for you, then you open up the full range of options for your health.

The biggest one is perspective, since "the world" has always been a mess of some degree of heat. Just the combination of the fragility of life, the arbitrariness of nature and the human lust for power would guarantee pain on a massive scale somewhere, always. (I repeat, I'm available for parties.) And, "the world" has always been stunningly beautiful. Do you like your beauty big? Look up at the sky. NIght, day, always. Like it small? Look at the New Haven cop outside for two hours in freezing rain making sure that seal was okay.

With perspective in hand, you optimize choice: How are you going to use your humanity? To dwell on the pain, or to appreciate beauty as well? To work to be beauty, maybe -- by working to alleviate pain you see? Or to get help for your own pain when it's too much and it's holding you back? (More sources of beauty: scientific progress, medical advances, caregivers.)

With your choices sketched out, then make a plan. There's a lot we don't know about our brains still, but we do understand that we do have the power to compartmentalize. And we do better when we toggle in and out of difficult things. Work, play, rest. Can you apply that to your life too?

Last, "make yourself happy" may not be the goal that makes sense -- now when you're under duress, or ever. "Happy" seems like a fixed state when we're all so subject to change, plus it's an unrealistic one.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And here's the article about the seal, which was referred to in the chat:

A seal is found wandering streets of New Haven, becomes local celebrity

Spotted five miles from the water, the pup was taken to an aquarium for rehab and eventual release.

(Take a look--it has cute photos)