[aceoffx]

I dunno if this is the right place to post but I'll go ahead anyway.

I'm a 24 year old male. I don't have any disorders but I have had low self esteem issues since I hit puberty I think. I'm currently seeing a therapist at my college because of that and in one of my recent sessions, I realized that I have two voices in my head. One Tells me I don't deserve to be happy or there's no point in being happy. But this is ironic since I'm seeing a therapist right now so clearly my subconsciousness tells me I want to be happy.

I consider myself a unlikable person, I believe girls will never love be as a romantic partner(I used to think this was a irrational belief but these days it's starting to feel rational ) I am not grateful to be born into this world in fact, I wish my mom aborted me when i was in her womb.

This is my condition right now. Getting to the point, all these thoughts led me to ask a philosophical question.

Why do we deserve to be happy(or whats the point of it)?

I feel it's a lot easier to be depressed and miserable so why go through the trouble to try and be happy and enjoy life?

What are you guys' opinions on this? Some might say everyone is special and deserve happiness just by existence alone. But I disagree, I see no point in thinking oneself as special when others don't look at you that way.

Do we deserve to be happy? Before I answer that question, let me ask this question: Do we deserve to be unhappy?

When we are born we are already happy. "A little bundle of joy." Thus, if true, some people become unhappy from life experiences. However, is it the life experiences, per se, that change you from happy to unhappy? Or is it your reaction to the life experiences that change you from happy to unhappy?

If it's true that there are things that make people unhappy, is it reasonable to assume that there are things that make people happy? How do we know we're unhappy if there's nothing to compare it to?

To conclude, I don't think there is anything, per se, that makes us happy or unhappy. That will be determined by our reaction.

I hope you feel better soon.

[Skeezyks]

The Skeezyks does not have an answer to this question. Happiness is an emotion with which he is not familiar. As an alternative to unhappiness, he cultivates simple acceptance.

[anushka]

Well, what i believe is that happiness is a choice, just like most other things in the world. In general, "unhappiness" is a negative situation, by definition. So whether u want to follow a negative emotion, or you choose the positive one is again a choice u must make. I agree, not everything that happens with u are good enough to keep u happy. But whether u fight such hard situation, or simply lose hope, is again a choice.

somewhere deeper within us, we LOVE to be happy. Thats the reason u went to a therapist, right? so why not put some effort behind something that we LOVE?

Wish you well.

[TishaBuv]

We all deserve to be happy. We all also feel sad, too. Ideally the happiness outweighs the sadness.

[yagr]

Originally Posted by aceoffx

do we all deserve to be happy?

My opinion is a resounding no. The premise fails my analysis. The word deserve implies that you have earned it. I do however, believe that happiness is available to any and all who desire it and are willing to earn it.

[Artchic528]

Yes. We all deserve happiness. We all deserve peace of mind and soul. Whether we chose to go out and seize said happiness is another matter entirely. It's so very easy to sit back and let the waves of depression wash over us and consume us, but it does very little to help us. As difficult as it may be, and impossible it may seem, everyone has the ability to go out and seize their own happiness. I truly believe that.

[BlueCrustacean]

My question is, why not be happy? Why berate yourself or criticize yourself over being human? What have you done that was so wrong to think that you deserve suffering? None of us are perfect. Guilt, misery and self-pity do nothing to help us, or the world around us. When we realize we deserve happiness, and that happiness is a choice we can make at literally any time we wish, anywhere, then it's easy to find happiness in our lives and then spread it to others, without refrain, expectation or jealousy. It's all an inside job.

[DisorganisedMind]

I don't believe it's a choice so much. I think we are victims of experience.

[JadeAmethyst]

I honestly do not know about "happy" and what the experience may be. It seems to be relative to many factors. It is not the lies we are exposed to, but more realistic acceptance of life and living thru and with the whole messy messes. If it doesn't poison you, addict you, kill you, you may be on the right path.

Jade

It seems that you have some kind of depression to me. Usually "normal" people have an "optimism bias". That is to say, they view things better than they are. This gives them hope to continue.

However, and at the same, and from an evolutionary point of view, we are hard wired for other environment. For an environment where there is no continuous stress and work, and where the social bonding was very strong in groups of 50-100 member tribes. However, under our current world, we are stressed all the time. No wonder why mental illness is pervasive. We are adaptable species, but we are prone to be negative, because in the past, being negative gave us a survival edge. That's "why zebras don't get ulcer" as Dr. Robert Sapolsky said, because they are stressed only when there is a predator in the vicinity. For us however, we are stressed 24/7 in our current environment. We need to program our minds consciously how to be positive. It is not the default response.

Do we deserve to be happy? Yes. I believe happiness is the ultimate goal of life. Why? Because negative emotions are painful while happiness is joyous. We have the instinct to live (it is not a choice, it is a give), so we have the responsibility to live happily. There is no other option for living, really.

Your physiology is also affected by your feelings. If you are stressed and depressed most of the time, it is more likely to catch a disease and die earlier, because your immune system will be in sleep mode during these times, while if you are happy and positive you are more likely to be healthy and live longer.

Hope you will feel better soon, and I am sure girls would accept you as you are if you try. Just try not to tell yourself negative things, because they will be programmed in your subconscious mind. That is why you began to believe these negative thoughts, because you repeated them again and again in your mind.

[Takeshi]

What would the people of North Korea would think?

People are starving to death, freezing to death, there's a big dictatorship going on in North, and you have conscription in your country, you're not brainwashed as much as the folks(I also consider those party members to be the unfortunate ones because their informations are severely limited) over there, I also hear that the race to get into good schools, are kinda similar to what goes in my country, you pay tons of money for tutoring schools, and university tuition and what not, to what end? I sometimes hear that your country and mine are technologically advanced, faster internet and bunch of new gadgets are born and exported sometimes. Many raw materials comes from many poor countries, it's just that the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Since you stated that you haven't got any 'disorder', I won't sugarcoat my opinions here. the world is ****ed up as it is, for example, "Meet the kids scavenging on rubbish dumps to survive", you can look it up on the internet, from the look of it, it is kinda recent article, which talks about kids, 15 million people just born in those area or in another developing countries, just think of the people from slum all over the world, don't they deserve a chance at having a happier life? And we also know the study from long ago by WHO or some international organization that the people in developing countries are actually happier or some stuff. IMHO, it's just ****ing relative like someone already said, for me personally, maybe I deserve to feel unhappy, your post was good though, as tough as it was to think about anyone's need to seek and pursue thier personal happiness, I'm realizing again that it actually has nothing to do with me at all.

(You haven't posted much but I tried to read most, if I sounded a bit provocative or whatever, that's because I'm angry at myself and at the world right now. )

[ViktorImalow64]

Only going off of the title of your thread I would say that yes absolutely everybody deserves to be happy as long as the means they are using are not harming anybody else. When I say harming I don't for instance mean the kind of psychological discomfort you make somebody else feel when you are in a relationship and for example break up in order to achieve being happy. When I say harming I mean serious methodical psychological and physical harm imparted to others in order to make you feel happy.