Author: Cryptic Anomaly
I have nothing against happiness. Happiness is beautiful when it happens naturally, that is, when it is not being forced into the room like some emotional guest that everyone has been ordered to entertain. I like the moments when life becomes lighter for a while, when laughter emerges without effort, when something unexpectedly good happens and the body remembers that it is still allowed to enjoy existing. With that being said, I do not think happiness is stable enough to be the main thing I build my life around. Happiness often feels like emotional weather. It can brighten the day, then disappear behind a painful memory, a difficult conversation, a health issue, a anxious thought, a bad night of sleep, or a small disruption that reminds the nervous system that it is still carrying old fears or wounds. Peace feels different to me. Peace does not need the whole day to behave properly before it becomes possible.
A lot of modern life treats happiness as though it is the final proof that someone is living correctly. People are told to choose happiness, chase happiness, protect their happiness, find what makes them happy and become the happiest version of themselves. On the surface, that sounds positive, yet there is also something exhausting about it. Once happiness becomes the main goal, the self can start monitoring its own emotional performance. Am I happy enough? Am I grateful enough? Am I healed enough? Am I enjoying this enough? Am I wasting my life if I am not constantly glowing with enthusiasm? Social science gives useful language for this difference. Ryan and Deci (2001) explain the distinction between hedonic wellbeing which focuses on pleasure and positive feelings and eudaimonic wellbeing which focuses more on meaning, self-realisation and living in a way that allows a person to function more fully. This distinction matters to me because I do not want a life that is only measured by whether I feel good at a particular moment. I want a life that feels true enough to live inside, even when I am tired, quiet, uncertain or not smiling for anyone.
There is also some pressure that comes with trying too hard to be happy. The pursuit can become another form of self-surveillance, where a person is not only experiencing life but constantly judging the emotional quality of that experience. Mauss, Tamir, Anderson and Savino (2011) found that strongly valuing happiness can paradoxically lead people to feel less happy, partly because they become more disappointed when their actual emotional state does not match the ideal they are chasing. That makes sense to me. If happiness becomes a requirement, then ordinary sadness starts to feel like failure. If joy becomes the standard, then exhaustion starts to look like a personal defect. Contrary to the usual motivational language, constantly chasing happiness does not always make a person freer. Sometimes it turns the inner life into a room where every feeling has to prove it is acceptable.
Peace is less glamorous than happiness which might be why I trust it more. It does not always look exciting from the outside. It does not always come with visible progress, productivity, romance, achievement or some bright declaration that life is suddenly wonderful. Sometimes peace is simply the absence of inner war. It is the moment when the body stops bracing for impact, the mind stops rehearsing every possible argument and the spirit no longer feels like it has to defend its own existence. Peace is not numbness, emotional emptiness.or pretending that everything is fine. It is a steadier internal arrangement where everything may not be fixed, yet the self is no longer being pulled apart by every demand, fear, wound, expectation, or old survival pattern.
This is why peace feels more trustworthy to me than happiness. Peace gives me somewhere to live with all aspects of myself. It does not ask me to perform positivity. It does not ask me to smile through discomfort or rename exhaustion as gratitude. It does not require me to become some perfectly whole version of myself before I am allowed to feel settled. Research on peace of mind also supports the idea that peace is not only a poetic concept. Vandepitte, Claes, T’Jaeckx and Annemans (2022) found that peace of mind and meaningfulness contribute to subjective wellbeing with peace of mind being strongly associated with life satisfaction, positive affect and negative affect. This is important because peace is not just a cute word people use when they want to sound spiritual. It can be part of the actual structure that helps life feel more stable, manageable and meaningful.
Happiness is also shaped by culture more than people often realise. Some societies teach people that good emotions should be loud, energetic, ambitious, visible and easy to recognise. Calmness can seem suspicious in a world addicted to stimulation. A person can be peaceful and still be asked what is wrong. They can be quiet and still be mistaken for unhappy. Tsai (2007) explains that people and cultures differ in their “ideal affect,” meaning the emotional states they most want to feel. Some value high-arousal positive states such as excitement and enthusiasm while others value low-arousal positive states such as calm and peacefulness. That helped me understand why happiness does not always feel like the safest emotional destination. I do not always want to feel lit up like a firework show. Most times I want the candle that stays lit quietly in the corner, the kind of light that does not demand applause to be real.
Pursuing peace has also changed what I am willing to tolerate. When happiness is the goal, it becomes easier to romanticise anything that gives a temporary emotional high. Intensity can be mistaken for love. Attention can be mistaken for care. Chaos can be mistaken for passion. Distraction can be mistaken for healing. Peace has a stricter standard. Peace asks whether something leaves me regulated, drained, respected, diminished, honest or self-abandoning. It asks whether I can still hear myself after engaging with a person, habit, place, decision, or version of my own thoughts. In that way, peace becomes more than a feeling. It becomes a filter. It tells me what belongs in my life, what has been surviving on old attachment wounds and what I have been calling normal only because I was used to enduring it.
Ultimately, I am not choosing peace because happiness is shallow. I am choosing peace because happiness is too fragile to be part of my foundation. I still want happiness to visit. I still want laughter, affection, softness, pleasure, beauty and those strange little moments where life suddenly feels kinder than expected. I simply do not want to spend my life chasing an emotional weather system and calling that stability. Peace is quieter, but it is stronger. Peace is the life where my nervous system is not constantly negotiating with chaos. Peace is the place where I do not have to abandon myself to be accepted, entertained, loved, productive or understood.
***References***
Mauss, I. B., Tamir, M., Anderson, C. L., & Savino, N. S. (2011). Can seeking happiness make people unhappy? Paradoxical effects of valuing happiness. Emotion, 11(4), 807–815. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3160511/
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2001). On happiness and human potentials: A review of research on hedonic and eudaimonic wellbeing. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 141–166. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.141
Tsai, J. L. (2007). Ideal affect: Cultural causes and behavioural consequences. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(3), 242–259. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1745-6916.2007.00043.x
Vandepitte, S., Claes, S., T’Jaeckx, J., & Annemans, L. (2022). The role of ‘peace of mind’ and ‘meaningfulness’ as psychological concepts in explaining subjective well-being. Journal of Happiness Studies, 23, 3331–3346. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-022-00544-z
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