Charlotte wrote on Can Happiness Be Learned?
“There are a lot of happy people on this blog, it’s just the general theme and mood of the comments and entries, which just confirms that like attracts like…”
I agree with Charlotte but I think there is another angle, or separate phenomena that goes on here. One that can’t be stopped because it’s a law of nature.
Like definitely attracts like. I am happy, other people who are happy show up here and we validate each other. It’s very similar to how dissatisfied women get together and bitch about their men.
Men are lousy… well yes they are.
That’s that. That’s the bond.
But on the blog we see the concept, “all boats rise”, illustrated.
When the tide is high… when it comes in, all the boats in the harbor rise. They just do. It is not 3 out of 4 boats that rise. It is ALL the boats that rise, some more than others dependent on how heavy they are or how buoyant the individual vessel.
It is for this reason depressed people can benefit from this blog. The tide is coming in all the time around here and if you hang around you will be buoyed very similar to the opposition situation… if you hang around bitching people, you will soon be bitching yourself.
Have you noticed people feel uplifted ’round here?
Skip to Tips on Happiness – Try Denial
i learned a long time ago where i spend my time impacts how i feel tremendously. but i also believe being content is my natural state, and when i’m not, i feel out of balance and “wrong.”
and i don’t know the origin of happiness, but i know that you, e., are living proof it doesn’t magically appear from a warm, fuzzy and happy childhood or absence of intensely difficult, painful experiences.
as my husband said to me many years ago, sometimes seeds that fall on the rocks flower beautifully nonetheless.
Absolutely whole heartedly agree! And the happier I get (I have some depressive tendencies) then the more I notice when other people start bitching and I know to back away. I saw this a lot last year being back in the classroom. I liked my kids and I thought they were interesting…a lot of teachers couldn’t stand their students and constantly talked bad about them. The more I defended them, the more I was attacked. There was something wrong with me, but the truth was the more I liked my kids and listened to them, the better they were for me and the quality of their work went up. Strange huh! You and the people on this blog always buoy me up.
I can attest to what you say Elsa, I’m not a happy person by nature, even with all my sag and jup trine my sun. I just have way too much Saturn and Pluto going on as well. This blog has definite appeal for me. I’ve always wanted to be one of the ‘shiny, happy’ people’. But I don’t think you are all out annoyingly happy, because that can really grate on ones nerves, whoever you are. I do read some blogs like that, it’s nice to know people are happy and all, but I can’t go there if I’m not in the mood. I’m always in the mood to read here.
I’m definitely a better person for the time I’ve spent on your blog(s). I’ve learnt a lot and my boat has risen fer sure.
I had my mood up by around 10:30am. I made a decision that I wasn’t going to say anything more to anyone, unless I could be more cheerful about it. I then took a flower essence that helped to lift my spirits. My mood may sink again over certain circumstances, but I’m in better shape now that Saturn is moving away from a few personal planets.
I’m generally more happy than sad, so I hate it when I can’t find a balance there. I normally don’t talk about anything that depresses me – I don’t like to bring others down, or to give more energy than is necessary to whatever is going on. It seems that transiting Jupiter squaring my Mercury from the 3rd, could have been helping things along – I had Saturn hitting Moon, Venus, Nodes and Mars in harsh aspects, along with a sextile to my Uranus/ascendant, and something just uncorked in me.
Oh, and like I said in another comment the other day: I really enjoy your community here – the comments from those who responded to your request for superficial chatter, made me laugh too 🙂 and I like your attitude.
I’ve struggled with depression on and off over the years. People can and do pull me down, most especially at work. My sense of humor has been my saving grace.
My personal experience with people who are super happy all the time is that I either think they are dumb or fake. I just really don’t want one mood all the time, I want to be the entire rainbow of emotions. I just think that is more authentic.
“Elsa were born with Jupiter on the ascendant.”
joana, yeah it makes sense but I was born with a fuck of a lot more than that and if you think I have an easy life (or ever have) that is a supreme delusion.
I am not attacking you, I just don’t know any other way to say this.
I love that boat metaphor and I certainly hope that applies here. I’m one to be really affected by other people’s moods so your blog should be helpful to me…but sometimes other people’s happiness just seems to be “rubbing it in” instead of actually being absorbed by me.
I’m pretty certain that I’ll never be a shiny happy person, some people are just born moody, others were born smiling…you see, I was born in Moon on the ascendant, you Elsa were born with Jupiter on the ascendant. Makes sense 😉
I get it joana. I have definite access to joy. But when I get even a whiff of the idea someone thinks I have it made… well I almost feel a responsibility to correct the perception even if the effort is futile anyway.
If people reading here knew the facts I assure you they would have a very hard time getting their jaws off the floor.
Thankfully (for everyone involved) the universe has provided a extremely effective smoke screen.
I think I like Elsa’s version of happiness. She’s real about it. You, Elsa, (not sure why I’m writing about you in third person), are real about it.
But like everyone else is saying, “fake happy” is just annoying.
There are pics of me as a kid – like age 5 – staring off with this furrowed brow and this mass of curly ringlets. I was always thinking very deeply about something (to the dismay of my Gemini mother). To this day, I am always thinking deeply about something, but I’m learning – right here – that that doesn’t mean I can’t also be happy.
I think for years, I thought happiness was “surface” and it’s not; Elsa’s been proof of that.
I just read an interview with actress Emma Thompson and when asked “What is the quality you like most in a woman,” she said “Ability to laugh in the face of disaster.”
I’m definitely attracted to people who are deep, but happy – and I’m learning from them.
Elsa, I’m not by any means saying it’s easy/easier for you because of Jupiter or anything else. But I was thinking about the previous post and how AMF described you as happy and how I could identify with him, with his Venus and such.
Plus I have Jupiter trine my Ascendant and Moon and that doesn’t make it easier for me to be happy neither so..bummer.
Joana, how did you know that, do you have Elsa’s chart…Elsa, if your chart is on this blog, I have not seen it 😉
Anyway, I wanted to make another comment, which is (maybe linked to getting older) I don’t see anything wrong with feeling ‘neutral.’ For whatever reason, I have never been the type of person to walk around smiling, but it is not uncommon that some stranger will look at me and say, “Smile!” That has always happened and it annoys the hell out of me actually. =glares=
Loonsounds – no, I don’t have Elsa’s chart but it’s one of those things that you pick from reading posts, sometimes she lets information slip hehe just kidding.
Elsa – And people don’t even want the facts, do they? They want the smoke screen to reflect them.
Yes different boats have different draughts, beams, displacements and balasts. This is a good place to come whatever the floatation. Did yu know about the Bow wave of boats Elsa? The bow wave is pushed up by the front of the boat. The bow wave appears to be travelling in front of the actual boat. As the boat moves through the water the wave is a kind of precursor to its direction. In my mind the bow is a visual for precognition and intuition. Perhaps we all have bow waves pushing up?
kingsley
The question for me is, how do you NOT soak up EVERYBODY ELSE”S anxiety and unhappiness? Especially if you love ’em.. I have always had that problem.. except now, as I wind my way through this thing called middle age…I’m learning to detach.. detach…detach. I have Jupiter in Aquarius, 4th house. Alas, Saturn’s also in my 4th.. this must explain my some of my dilemma.
Maureen, I don’t know the answer to your question, except when I severely depressed my Dad used to say ‘Nothing lasts forever’ as well as ‘It’s a great life if you don’t weaken’ almost every day to me and it would make me so angry I wanted to knock him out.
Which, in hindsight, is a good thing I was able to feel anything.
Now that I am not depressed, and instead just highly emotional, I appreciate his words of wisdom. And in fact when he became depressed for the fist time in his life when he was 79, I said the same words back to him, along with ‘Do you believe this or no?’
Kashmiri, I so relate. Maybe happiness (even the highly emotional kind) gives us compassion, and the courage to detach too. Hmm.
What I get from this blog (among other things) is how people buoy each other up. There is a tendency to be supportive when someone is having a rough go of it.
“Have you noticed people feel uplifted ’round here?”
Rather than “uplifted,” the word that comes resonates with me is “healed.”
Thanks, Stellium. You’re right. There is permission to be happy around here and this is another thing not so easy to find.
What I noticed is the happiness around here seems to stem from strength, resilience, and buoyancy, which is probably why when someone posting IS having a bad time, everyone else seems to uplift them. Sort of a “been there, done that, you’ll get through it and it will make you stronger” energy. 🙂
If happiness and other states of being/feeling are a choice as some believe, then, I guess I do choose to be happy. The alternative, being unhappy, doesn’t really hold much appeal for me. I try to hold onto my happy, it takes me for better rides than my unhappy.
And, yes, we do appreciate the permission to be happy on these boards! The healing effects are noticeable, too!
Years ago, when I was about 7 or 8, my ragaholic father came home one day, and my brother and I looked up from the tv we were watching, said hi, and then went back to watching tv. Well, the volcano erupted, with him screaming at us that he wanted us to be happy when he came home, we were to “smile, god damn it!” when he got home. Trauma from that aside, looking back, I think it was at that point I learned that sometimes smiling, even when fear, uncertainty, sadness are prevalent, seems to set off a physiological response in the body, that can help change emotions.
Anyway, there has been depression, and sadness, and overwhelm in life, but somehow, I’ve held onto my mantra that as long as you can smile through the tears, then somehow, no matter the odds, you win. No matter how difficult, no matter how daunting the challenges, I am going to “win”. When it is time for me to leave this plane of existence, I am going to do so with a smile on my face, still holding tight to my ideals of kindness and compassion and love.
I’ve only been a member and posting for a little over a month iirc, though reading the blog for much longer.
I can honestly say, I don’t know how I’d have got through the last month without this blog and its ‘bouyant’ denizens. Finding myself between a rock and a hard place, I’m having a very tough time personally right now, trying to make some difficult decisions or at least to see a way forward through all the fog of the planetary landscape, and that of my past and present. The blog and the boards have given me not just insights (and a huge number of belly laughs) but alternative ways of looking a things…
I’m not a naturally happy person, Saturn being the ruler of my chart so far as I can see (it’s very strongly Cap, and I have Saturn square Venus in Cap to add to the fun), so to come here and share humour and insights with people who are also in possibly in the shit, or who have certainly been there but come through, is incredibly precious. It’s kept me sane.
The blog has helped me to understand the cause of my trouble much better – and has also made me think very seriously about many things in my life, which is a big positive, since it’s so easy if you are pretty reclusive (as I am now) or even if you get your feedback mainly from the same old friends and family, to get into a mental and emotional rut. Emotional bad habits are as pernicious as any other sort. Reading these boards and contributing to them ensures that is not an option…
One caveat – I think some are using ‘happy’ almost as a synonym for ‘positive’ but they are not the same thing! I hope those of us who are not happy (and can see no hope of being so any time soon) through whatever various circumstances, can at least learn to be *positive* and so avoid dragging ourselves and others down into negativity. The board is great at encouraging that; and the ‘lifting’ of one another when a vessel of the fleet appears holed beneath the line, is a big part of it.
Have I noticed people feel uplifted ’round here?
Umm, all of the above?
I tracked my happiness during the past 15 minutes and what emerged is how susceptible we are to one another’s happiness or gloom.
• Bliss and joy while looking up at a tree and the sky behind it.
• Breathing in the gratefulness, I touch my tooth with my tongue and I’m quickly reminded that I need to schedule that root canal (ugh!).
• Walk past the TV on the way to the washing machine feeling really happy that I don’t need to take clothes to the Laundromat; the college football game my husbands watching shows some kid getting clobbered, while his mother watches him get carried off the field. (Ouch!)
I love Saturdays! My Mom hates Saturdays because she’s lonely and knows I like to do my thing (groceries, yoga, and laundry) after a hard week at work. OK, so should I be not be happy because my poor Mom is miserable?
I get sad seeing people attack another’s happiness; after all, we don’t really know what is going on with them while they step their best foot forward with the hand they’re dealt.
Something that uplifts me is to come to Elsa’s blog to learn; and to share stuff I learned that might be of use to someone.
Laundry’s almost done!
Stay in the Love – Sail On… : )
That’s why I love reading your blog! It’s a friendly and supportive place.
All the communities should be like this. One for all and all for one 🙂
There is a song that says :
In high seas or in low seas , I am gonna be your friend. In high tide or in low tide I will be by your side.
I think this blog is more comforting than anything else. Sometimes, it is enough to know that other people are having a hard time, just like you. Other times, it is nice to know that other people are having a great day. It is reassuring to know that you will feel that way again.
I have Libra rising with Venus in my first house. Forever seeking balance and serenity.
I’ve noticed something on some illness sites I’m on – it’s like a competition for some people about who is the most miserable, afflicted, jacked up, etc and I have like zero capacity to be around that.
Thanks Elsa for having a place where I don’t have to be around that LOL.
Most definitely! At least I do 🙂
the energy here is a kind of soul food…
for me, anyway