This blog post is going to be a lot. You've been warned.
I'm not sure that I know what it is to feel spontaneously. Looking back, scanning my memories, I... struggle to remember what it means to experience emotion, if indeed I ever felt them at all. Emotions, for me, always come with a cheapening question: "What should I be feeling right now?" This question taints my every experience of the world. It leaves me wondering, "Am I feeling these things for me? For others? For the status quo?" And furthermore, "Does it matter?"
I think it does matter. Feelings are meant to come from the stimuli causing the emotion, not from the person experiencing it. Art, beauty, everything worth feeling anything over exist in order to play the feelings of those who experience them like an instrument. Art and beauty and everything worth feeling anything over are the players. We are meant to be the instruments.
I am an instrument waiting to be played. I want to learn what it is to make music.
I've been talking very abstractly, so let me give you a more example. This post began as a discussion about stories about dying worlds (I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Dark Souls 3, I Saw the TV Glow), and what those stories want us to feel. In writing it, I realized that I was feeling about those stories what I believed I was supposed to feel, and try as I might, I couldn't nail down what I actually felt outside of what I was obligated to feel. I think that's really what I'm trying to get across; it seems like I'm obligated to feel what I'm supposed to feel, rather than what I actually feel. Obligated by what? I'm not sure. Maybe we'll find out somewhere along this journey.
To begin this without acknowledging the at-least-one elephant in the room would be setting us all up for failure. I've suffered from depression my entire life. I think that feelings things, this music I'm pursuing, was taken from me by depression. I've gone down many roads trying to seek treatment for it, and have been at least partly successful -- I'm on meds, which help, and in therapy, which does wonders. I'm sure both of these things will come up in my explorations here. I'm hoping that this project will be another step along that same process.
This blog, In the Pursuit of Happiness, will chronicle my pursuit of feeling (again?). I'm hoping that I'll be able to release at least one post per week detailing something new that I try in order to find whatever it is I'm looking for. To be totally clear, I'm operating fully on vibes here -- I don't know when or how or if I'll know I've reached the end of that journey. I'm kind of hoping that when I get there, I'll know it. I'll feel something new. I'll find a new kind of happiness.
I hope you'll come along on this journey with me.
If you'd like to do so in a literal way, perhaps sharing your own pursuits of happiness, I've made a small Discord server where I can announce new posts, which you can join here. It's only got a few forum style channels, and will be the closest thing this site ever gets to a Comments section. I hope to see you there.