My Pyramid of Happiness

Some of my friends are very smart. So are a few of my foes but what do I care about my enemies. They are or should be irrelevant to my being and wellbeing! Smart people intrigue me. If you are a loser like me; no pressure partner; I am just about to make your day. I see a “kak”-load of very smart people who are as unhappy as hell can allow. Methinks smart and unhappy is a mathematical anomaly. So allow me to decipher this mystery in the best way I know: Foolishly! While smart people will to great lengths to define happiness, conduct research to seek the true meaning and sources of it, I am saying let’s keep it simple.

When someone pisses on your parade, you are going to go ape-shit! Hell, some of you hate me already and I haven’t done nada to you! Getting pissed off with someone or about something shouldn’t be bad. Our friends and families or even strangers will do or say things that will annoy us from time to time. Whether your reaction at that moment is one of blowing your top off or retreating to some cocoon, that short period of momentary anger is not unhappiness! That is you being you! Sadness is when this “momentary” downer lasts for more than, well, momentarily.

My simple theory to happiness is to always run my life as a business. In this business, I have blocks that make up my pyramid of happiness. In constructing my pyramid blocks, what I have done first and foremost is ensure that all the blocks are there! Those blocks are the people around me, things that I do, who I do it with and everything else that makes life around me ever so nice or miserable. Ensuring that these blocks are the right ones is by me setting up clear parameters of interaction with my environment. One such parameter is that of being nuanced and circumspect in my reaction to everything!

Now I am set to live!

The simplicity of this philosophy evades many of us very easily. So, before you start tearing your hair out of our skull, let’s check the premise of our own expectations. The reason my life’s reference is a pyramid and not a square block is so I know the things and people that are anchors to my life and those that are part of the structural support. All may be important but the apex cannot be the base or vice versa! My pyramid cannot stand if I invert it! It follows then that whenever my structure is hit by a tragedy; it is much easier to rearrange my pyramid, ensuring that that pieces are where they should be. Should one be broken, I can replace it without having to resort to building a new pyramid.

To try illustrate happiness at its simplest and crudest, let’s make a pyramid of the following simple choices in a love relationship.

Money Intelligence level Sex (More or Less) Kindness

The rational among us must surely rate the above four aspects in a lover in some way and with some degree of importance. What we can take to the bank is that we don’t all rate them equally. It is obvious then and our choices must be informed by their hierarchy of importance to each one of us. It is that choice, made in the darkest corner of our hearts which will result in the relationship being a happy one or not. If you compromise for fear of rejection or in a bid to please your lover or anyone else, you would have sown the seeds for disaster right there. If you invert the pyramid, even after you have erected it, it will not hold.

--------------To be continued………