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How Can I Be Happier?
Why do I feel so defeated?
Avoiding temporary happiness
How many times have you ever looked over into another car while driving and wondered what the other driver is thinking about?
I get a lot of my insights about people while driving around. I have around a million miles of driving time in the last 20 years (that’s no exaggeration). I see one major consistency.
When we all drive separately and are all alone, we are in our quasi happy place. We can set the temperature how we like, we can put down the windows or drop the top if we want, we can listen to what we want. Basically, we can do what we want without any outside interference, until….
So we are trying to merge and that asshole won’t let us in. Screw it, we’re just gonna go for it. They’ll stop, they like their paint job. Now we hear a horn, we look in the mirror to see a prominently displayed facial expression of grievance.
We’ve just interfered with someone else’s “me” time. Now their anger is messing with your “me” time and so it goes.
We let that interlude pass and then sooner or later the next unprovoked interaction occurs and so on and so on.
It doesn’t take a lot of effort to be forcefully removed from your happy place. Within…