Can we be happy doing things we don't want to do?

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I think we all have some kind of idea of what we think we want our lives to look like. The issue that I find I had with this concept of what I thought I wanted is that it led me to also believe things had to happen a certain way to achieve this life. I spent a lot of time breaking down my own expectations and illusions of what I think my life needs to look like and figured out that the easiest way for me to get there was by removing the things I didn't want one by one. It's been a long process and I can't say it's complete or ever will be complete, but it brings up one major question in my mind: Can we ever be happy or even content doing something we don't want to do?

Perhaps that question is easier examined from this direction: Why would we do something we don't want to do? I feel that this is the biggest illusion and issue that many of us avoid addressing. Let's look at relationships as the example of what I'm discussing here. If we think that we want or need someone in our life, because they bring us happiness, but the requirement of them being in our life is that we have to put up with things we don't want or never asked for, then looking at things as a whole, they are bringing us both things we do and don't want. The issue is that we are now personifying and projecting our emotions onto another person and they are conflicting.

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If we first accept that we are responsible for our own emotional state and don't base that on anything external to ourselves, it's clear to see that relationships are always going to have some push and pull, but they shouldn't be used to justify things we don't want as that leads to resentment and externalizing our own power. It's not only damaging to our own self worth to externalize that power, but it puts a lot of unrealistic expectations on the other person that they will never be able to live up to no matter how hard they may try. In a sense, we are making our partner responsible for our own happiness and emotional well-being. That's not only unhealthy for ourselves, but it's unfair to the partner as they are now the justification for us putting up with things we don't want.

It's easy to get lost seeking things we think we need for a person we think we want in our lives. I realize compromise is one of the things we view as necessary to making relationships work, but perhaps we spend too much time compromising with the wrong partner instead of just finding a partner that we don't have to compromise with as much in the first place. So I speculate the answer to the first question is really about justifying things we don't want because we are afraid of losing the parts of things or the people associated with them that we think we do want. In the end, aren't we just living a lie and making ourselves unhappy and using another person or thing as an excuse?

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From my perspective, we can't be happy doing things we don't want to do, regardless of how or why we justify them. Love is not an excuse to put our own dreams, wants, or desires to the side. An idea of what we think our lives should look like doesn't always justify the means we use to get there. What's the point of spending 40-50 years working a job we don't like to just get by and go home unhappy every day? What's the point of having kids to make a partner happy if we don't want children? Personally I think we all have to look at our own lives and be as authentic as we can be to actually be happy and all the reasons that justify how we get there are probably what is keeping us from being happy in the first place. So the question shifts in my mind from: 'Can we ever be happy or even content doing something we don't want to do?' to the question of 'Can we ever be happy living a lie?' The answer I come to is no. Namaste.

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