I’ve given up on being happy. What does happiness even mean?

About three years into therapy, my psychiatrist told me that I shouldn’t hope to be happy. I don’t remember if hope was the right word. But I think his point was that happiness is just temporary.

Instead, I should’ve looked for satisfaction. Satisfaction lasts much longer, and one can be satisfied by one’s life, not happy. That sounded much easier because happiness is indeed fleeting, and satisfaction can last a lot longer.

People tend to look for happiness.

“I’m not happy.”

“You don’t look very happy.”

“Why am I not happy?”

“I should be happy. I have X, Y, and Z. But I’m miserable instead.”

I’m miserable because I’m not satisfied.

That psychiatrist was brilliant. He’s dead now. He died from some sort of cancer that he wouldn’t disclose about ten years ago. I remember he would take frequent trips to the bathroom, and I thought, “Wait a minute. He’s going to the bathroom on my dime. I should be outraged.”

But out of politeness, I never brought it up to him. I usually left his sessions upset at him and myself, but those sessions would usually leave me satisfied, not happy. I won’t get into the details of what we talked about. That was between me and him. I remember the last time I saw him. It was at a hospice where he was dying. His teeth were black. Most of them were missing. He said some things to me that weren’t nice, and he demanded money in cash for our session, so I had to drive to the bank and withdraw it before I drove back and gave it to him.

I remember sitting in my car afterward and telling myself I would never see him again. I felt like some sort of criminal after what he’d said to me, like someone who’s antisocial. I’d always been a loner, but I felt very alone, sitting in my car, about to drive home.

Yes, happiness is a lost cause. I’ll never be happy. Sometimes I’m satisfied after a great dinner at a restaurant or after a book I’ve read, but those moments are rare. I guess satisfaction is as difficult as happiness or close to it at least. But the pressure is off. I’m not pressured to be satisfied. People don’t come up to me and say, “You don’t look satisfied.” They would say, “You don’t look happy.”

Something either satisfies me or it doesn’t. It usually doesn’t. And then I’m left unsatisfied and disappointed, unhappy, let down, depressed even.

I would leave the casino feeling that way, losing hundreds of dollars at the slot machines after being ahead. Let’s say I won over a hundred dollars at the machine. I felt both happiness and satisfaction. But I wasn’t satisfied enough to walk away with the money. I got greedy. It wasn’t about the money. It was about the adrenaline rush of being satisfied by the winning. So I kept playing and playing and playing until I lost everything down to a few pennies. I left the machine, dejected, exploited, and most of all, unsatisfied.

Forget unhappy. There’s no such thing as happiness. Maybe I’m happy for someone else. I sure can’t be satisfied for someone else. That sounds impossible.

But anyway, those are my two cents on the illusion of happiness.