Why Do We Always Have to Give Something Up?

Someone I know posted a link on Facebook today entitled 15 Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy.  I'm sure the person (or people) who compiled that list did it with the best of intentions and I'm sure there is some cogent advice lurking within the suggestions which many people would do well to follow.  However I'm not entirely sure that as a quick recipe to bliss this is necessarily the best path to follow.  The suggestions are as follows;

1.  Give Up Your Need to be Always Right
2.  Give Up Your Need for Control
3.  Give Up on Blame
4.  Give Up Your Self Defeating Self Talk
5.  Give Up Your Limiting Beliefs
6.  Give Up Complaining
7.  Give Up the Luxury of Criticism
8.  Give Up Your Need to Impress Others
9.  Give Up Your Resistance to Change
10. Give Up Labels
11. Give Up on Your Fears
12. Give Up Your Excuses
13. Give Up the Past
14. Give Up Attachment
15. Give Up Living Your Life to Other People's Expectations

As I said, there is some good advice buried in there if you take it in context and don't go nuts.  Let us admit, however, that the human race does have this tendency to go nuts over various ideas (and the nuttier the idea the more likely it is to happen) and there are times when the wholehearted acceptance of anything leads only to disaster.  Just to play devil's advocate (which pays much better than prosecutor) let's do a little analysis of these suggestions.

1.  Give Up Your Need to be Always Right.  I don't know if I would call it a need but it is certainly nice to be right.  Useful too, particularly when reading a map.  Personally I would rather like to be right all the time.  It would take a lot of the angst out of decision making.  Naturally everybody else would hate me.  People always hate those who are right all the time.  But the only other option is to be deliberately wrong.  This may well lead to temporary happiness up until that point when you confidently assert that the train looming down on you will stop in time.  After that things might get a bit messy.

2.  Give Up Your Need for Control.  Again, its nice to be in control.  Of course you can't control everything and there are some things which arguably you shouldn't control such as the lives of others or (in my case) anything breakable or dangerous.  Still, if the aforementioned train is bearing down on you it might be handy if you could control that.

3.  Give Up on Blame.  A fine sentiment on the surface.  But if everybody gave up on blame then nobody would be blamed for anything.  Which means that nobody would have to face any consequences for their actions.  I'm not sure that this would improve either the world or my personal happiness.

4.  Give Up Your Self Defeating Self Talk.  Yes, I will concede this one despite the tortured syntax.  Defeatism is a terrible drag on going out and doing what needs to be done.  On the other hand if you are manifestly unfit to be doing what you're attempting then a little constructive defeatism might just keep life in your body for a few more years.

5.  Give Up Your Limiting Ideas.  This one would sound fine if they hadn't attempted to emphasise the point by saying "spread your wings and fly".  I earnestly entreat you not to spread your wings and fly otherwise you will find that instead you have flapped your arms and fallen.  Possibly to a hideous death.  Limits are imposed on what we can do.  They aren't imposed by us necessarily, they are imposed by things like gravity, ballistics and inertia.  Ignore them at your peril.

6.  Give Up Complaining.  This won't make you happier but it will certainly make everybody around you happier.  On that basis I'm prepared to accept this one.  Or to put it another way; Shut the fuck up, nobody cares.

7.  Give Up the Luxury of Criticism.  See blame.  Yes criticism, especially unjustified or ignorant criticism is tedious, irritating and frequently an absolute pain in the neck.  I would be firmly in favour of abolishing unjustified criticism as long as we didn't toss justified criticism out with the bathwater.

8.  Give Up Your Need to Impress Others.  This one seems unimpeachable but there is actually a need to impress others.  Nobody builds a genuine relationship whether of love or friendship with somebody who doesn't impress them in some way.  Unless your idea of bliss is to be vaguely well thought of but utterly ignored by absolutely everybody you are going to have to impress somebody and that might take a bit of effort.

9.  Give Up Your Resistance to Change.  Yes, embrace change.  Remember this when somebody suggests your entrails might look better on the outside of your body for a change.  Resistance to change is not some piece of stupid dogmatism it is a survival technique.  For every bold adventurer who stepped forth into the unknown and returned covered in glory there are a hundred who stepped forth straight into a lion's jaws.  I don't say you should be violently opposed to change but I do suggest that you walk around change, inspect it closely from all angles and assure yourself as far as you can that it isn't simply bloody silly.

10.  Give Up Labels.  This would be self evidently stupid if they hadn't gone on to say "Stop labeling those things, people or events that you don’t understand as being weird or different and try opening your mind."  This is good advice but keep the labels handy anyway.  Its entirely possible that once you have opened your mind and accepted these people or events that you didn't understand you will come to realise that they are still weird and different (and quite possibly insane).  Then it will be helpful to have a label to tag them with so you don't get caught out next time.

11.  Give Up On Your Fears.  They punctuate this point by quoting Franklin D Roosevelt "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself" and possibly Nazis and polio.  Fear has its place.  I don't keep my hands out of the fire for the hell of it, I'm just afraid of getting burnt.  If the human race were without fear by this stage we would also be without humans.  Fear does a pretty good job of counteracting people's natural stupidity.

12.  Give Up Your Excuses.  Indeed.  From now on accept that every slight, failure, loss and miserable occurrence is all your own fault.  This will make you much happier.  I actually support this one but not because I think it will increase anyones happiness.

13.  Give Up the Past.  Understandable advice but difficult.  The past is the only thing we actually own.  The present is shared between everybody else and Christ knows who's going to be running the future.  Beside the past has valuable lessons to teach us.  If you did something in the past which made you miserable your future happiness is unlikely to be improved by ignoring that.

14.  Give Up Attachment.  No!  We are all attached to each other.  Some of the bonds are stronger than others, some are so faint as to be almost invisible but they are there.  The writer points out that he doesn't mean to give up loving but merely attachment because that comes from fear.  At this point he is talking total rubbish.  I love books but I'm not attached to them.  The love I have for my friends and family comes with attachment.  I am linked to them as I am not to my books (no matter how much I might say I love them) and I would consign all my books to the flames tomorrow to help friends or family.  I would not burn my friends for the sake of my books.  That's the difference between love with and without attachments.

15.  Give Up Living Your Life to Other Peoples Expectations.  Sound advice within reason.  There are some occasions when it is very wise to live your life to other peoples expectations particularly if those other people are your employers or a parole board for example.  Beyond that there are certain people who make us better than we are because we don't want to disappoint them.

In conclusion (finally) if one succeeded in giving up all of the above possibly you would be happy but you would have given up so much of yourself that it is difficult to see what exactly would be happy.  Certainly it wouldn't be anyone your friends or family would recognise or, in all likelihood, want to spend much time with.