Often people confuse happiness with being in contentment.
Happiness is Joy.
Joy is an emotional state of mind.
Like all emotions they tend to rise and fall in severity.
It's unhealthy to try to hold onto an emotional state.
If contentment is the center (standard emotional state), joy and anger are extreme periods of emotion which rise and fall according to stimuli.
You get periods which cause joy and you get periods which cause anger. Since those emotions flex, trying to live in constant joy or anger can cause depression. Its unnatural and impossible.
Depression is self-sustaining extreme periods of all emotions. It can cause you to feel you have no control over your own feelings or your own life.
Most of life is non-eventful, emotionally speaking.
If those periods of non-emotional events are 'empty' you think you can't feel happiness.
When you gain emotional maturity, its easier to feel contentment during those non-event periods of life.
You realize happiness (joy) and anger (malcontent) are emotional states which are not meant to last a long time. You have control over malcontent and experience greater sensitivity to the moments which bring you joy.
You still get happy but its more powerful
You still get angry but it is less severe and debilitating.
Non-eventful periods of life are reinforced by contentment.
Contentment becomes your ... middle ground, so to say.
When contented, there's no room for depression to take hold.
Life can be hard.
Everyone builds a delusion about something.
When the delusion is broken, we get confused.
That confusion of life's expectations affects contentment.
Accepting the reality of your own life, without the delusional gloss allows you to be contented because reality is always reality.
We all set expectations on life. We are taught what to expect by the other people we meet.
We build delusions based on other people's examples of what life is supposed to be.
When our own lives don't match those expected results it confuses expectations. Natural contentment eludes us.
Remove the delusions and see your own life's reality. Set your own expectations based on what you know about your own life.
Delusions can be broken but reality is reality and applies no matter the expectation.
Understanding that, allows contentment and natural expression of emotion.
If you 'feel nothing' you are telling yourself to feel nothing and denying your own emotional expression. Feeling 'numb' emotionally is a form of depression.
I've felt the same way before and its soul-wrenching.
I needed to come to grips with my expectations and remove the delusions I built so I could embrace reality.
Once that was mastered (It took a long time), I found inner contentment and my moments of joy were so much sweeter. It also allowed me to make better decisions which lessened the malcontent and anger I felt. It gave me control of my own emotional stability.
Many, many things in life bring me joy now.
Few things make me angry and when I am angry, I can control and remove the anger from my decision making.
I never really feel over-whelming sadness anymore. I still feel sadness when it is warranted but it doesn't consume me.
If you allow someone else to tell you how to live your life, you are living their lives ... not yours.
Take back your life and live your life your way.
You are the only expert on how to live your own life, because it is YOUR life after-all.
Without YOU your life is a lie.
Those lies (delusions) bring malcontent because things in your life don't align with delusional expectations.
Put your head on right...see the reality of your life and take control of it. It should be the easiest thing you can do.
Nobody can do a better you, they don't walk your path.
Nobody else is commenting about this? I will....excellent!