Happiness

Published on TheTropicalViking.com in July 2015

Swinging – the secret of life. 

 

A truly happy man is a man who enjoys the sound of his own laughter.

 

I was laying in a hammock the other day, reading some inspiring words about life. Without really thinking about it I started to rock the hammock a little so that it would swing me back and forth. Hammocks are good that way, they are the grown persons cradle. It is funny that we these appliances that swing us through life; cradles for the babies, swings for the kids, hammocks for the grown ups and rocking chairs for the old. Why? What is it with the motion of back and forth, up and down that gives us so much pleasure?

I tried to dissect the motion and quickly realised that it is impossible to say where the peak of enjoyment would be if I had to decide. Dividing it into parts doesn’t make any sense, it would kill the whole experience, like trying to say there is a certain note in a piece of music that is better than the one before when it is the piece of music put together to a certain melody that makes the music enjoyable. 

Being on a swing is the same thing, perhaps slightly exaggerated. The thrilling excitement of going higher and coming back down goes together. If the swing was to stop at the highest point the enjoyment stops, the pleasure would be suspended because there would be no changing state. The pendulum motion is necessary for us to even have any kind of experience. 

The swinging itself is absolutely pointless, we don’t do it to get anywhere or to achieve a task. There is no prize or reward except for the enjoyment and thrill of the swinging itself. It is playing, a very unserious act where we succumb and accept only the most fundamental of rules, if we put in more effort we will go higher, if we stop moving we will slow down and we can quit by either fading to a halt at the bottom or jump off at the top and go out with a bang not knowing where we will land. Until then, we enjoy the ride. 

Playing is a choice, we have the option to swing if we want to but most often we seem to forget this and perform our daily duties and responsibilities in an utmost serious manner as if making them fun would ruin the result, even most research point out that happy people perform better. Swinging to the preferred tempo would then only make for a better outcome. Many fear going down and strive to stay as high as possible at all times, creating that suspended animation where it becomes harder or even impossible to notice the differences of what is pleasure and what is pain. Instead of feeling it is somewhat accepted and even expected not to feel at all. Life is not always easy but many of the times it is as easy as we allow it to be. When accepting that the rules are just as simple as those of the swing and that there is no marked out finish line or specific meaning other than what we give it, then we can learn to enjoy the ride and play nice.