Why Some People Are Unhappy

There is so much truth in what Leo Tolstoy, the famous Russian writer, said in very beginning of his celebrated novel Anna Karenina: “Happy families are alike, and unhappy families are unhappy in their own way.” So, those who are happy and those who are unhappy must share some common attributes or characteristics that predispose them to happiness or unhappiness.

The unhappy people

Unhappy people may have the following in common:

Identity crisis

They do not know who they really are. That is, they may have falsely identified themselves with something in the world they are living in, such as “I am a successful business-man” or “I am a good mother.”

Once they have created false identities for themselves, they naturally feel the need to protect and preserve their self-created images. In doing so, they desperately want to control their destinies, such as avoiding what they fear may taint their identities, or repeating what they previously did in order to sustain and substantiate their identities.

Reflective Thought

You are who you are, and not who you would like to be.

A Case in Point

A “successful businessman” may want to overwork in order to avoid in future all possible failures in his or her business, or to repeat in future all his or her past successful business endeavors.

A “good mother” may strive to control the behaviors of her children in order to control and shape them into the individuals she wants them to become to prove that she is a good mother.

In the process of avoiding failure and expecting success to repeat, stress is not only unduly created but also aggravated by outcomes falling short of their expectations. Nowadays, many people are living to escape yesterday’s pains and to anticipate tomorrow’s pleasures; unfortunately, they are on the road to more unhappiness, and not less.

Not Letting Go

Unhappy people simply refuse to let go of what they think belong permanently to them, and anticipate what they think they rightly deserve through their efforts to control or influence outcomes of events in their daily lives. They are afraid of any unforeseeable change, especially death that puts an end to everything they have delusively created for themselves.

Stephen Lau

Copyright© by Stephen Lau