Addicted to sorrow

We desperately seek the elusive. When we find it, we want more of it. The quest is eternal. Meaningless even. But surely it must be in our best interests?

As elusive as happiness is, misery is addictive. It exists all around, clinging on to wandering souls like a leech. The only difference maybe that one is parasitic while the other is a symbiotic relationship.

We get so lost in our pursuits, we don't realise in our preoccupation, that we are indeed pursuing just the opposite. With the multitudes of paths that lie before us, we choose just the lanes that make us feel the pain. The nostalgic pain. It almost feels cathartic. It feels good. It just has to be there. It makes you complete.

It appears (looking from the outside) as if for no reason whatsoever, the human mind (whatever that means) conjures up pain so real, I almost think it has some evolutionary significance. The pain can be first hand. If that doesn't exist, then the pain can be second, or even third hand. And if all of that doesn't exist, the beauty of it all is that joy, could in its very ephemerality, always be sorrowful. Our subconscious mind is only too quick to realise this.

I wonder if there really is so much misery around us that it is only natural that we pick it up effortlessly, or is it that we pick it up because it is a survival skill?

Discontinuing metaphors, are we really happy when we are sad? It sure doesn't feel that way. I don't know if I know what happiness is. By definition, they are opposites, although not necessarily mutually exclusive. Does being sad make us feel better or help us in ANY way? If not, why do we even feel miserable where there really is nothing preventing us from feeling the opposite?