People wreck themselves chasing happiness like it’s some finish line they’ll eventually cross. Like if they just find the right job, the right partner, the right whatever-the-fuck, they’ll finally arrive at this mythical state of permanent bliss.
It’s bullshit.
All of it.
Happiness comes. Happiness goes. That’s the nature of the thing. It was never meant to be permanent. It was never meant to be the point.
The confusion on people’s faces when I bring this up in conversations is telling. As if I’ve just told them gravity is optional. “But isn’t the goal to be happy?” they ask.
No.
It’s not.
And chasing it is destroying you.
The Insanity of the Happiness Project
Think about what this pursuit actually looks like in practice:
- You get the job. The dopamine hit lasts three weeks. Then you need a promotion.
- You buy the house. The excitement fades before you’ve even unpacked all the boxes.
- You find the relationship. The butterflies settle. Then you wonder if you could do better.
Each time, the bar resets. Each time, you need more. The happiness never sticks because it was never designed to.
The entire social media landscape reflects this madness. People spiraling over comments, likes, validation from strangers. We’ve created a world where emotional stability depends on universal approval – a guaranteed path to misery.
What if happiness isn’t what we actually need?
The Still Point in the Turning World
Peace exists in a completely different dimension than happiness.
Happiness needs things to go your way. Peace doesn’t give a shit either way.
Happiness demands specific conditions. Peace remains available regardless of conditions.
Happiness shouts. Peace whispers.
I’ve seen people maintain genuine peace while facing career setbacks, health challenges, or real hardship. And right beside them, people with every external advantage exist in states of perpetual dissatisfaction.
The difference wasn’t their circumstances. It was their relationship to those circumstances.
Peace says: “This interview went badly, and I’m still worthy.”
Peace says: “This person doesn’t like me, and that’s perfectly fine.”
Peace says: “I don’t know what happens next, and I don’t need to.”
This isn’t passive acceptance. It’s not rolling over and giving up. Peace requires more strength than happiness-chasing ever will.
The Art of Letting Shit Be
There’s a particular disease spreading – the inability to just let something fucking be. Someone shares good news about their promotion, and immediately you’re comparing accomplishments. A colleague suggests an idea in a meeting, and you can’t help but one-up it or break it into pieces cause that’s how you operate. Your partner mentions a simple observation, and you find yourself rushing to correct minor details that don’t matter.
That compulsion, the one that makes you need to assert dominance, be right, or score points, it’s the peace-killer.
People exhaust themselves maintaining this fiction that they’re the smartest, the most accomplished, the most whatever-the-fuck in every room they enter. The mental accounting is exhausting: Did I sound impressive enough? Did they notice my accomplishment? Am I winning this invisible competition?
Peace is the radical act of hearing something and just saying, “Cool, that’s awesome” – and actually meaning it. No internal scorekeeping. No need to top their story. No secret resentment.
It’s the freedom to hear feedback without immediately defending yourself. It’s sitting in a meeting where someone else’s idea gets chosen and genuinely being fine with it. It’s the ability to read a text at face value without excavating for hidden meanings.
The most peaceful people I know aren’t the ones with the most impressive resumes or Instagram feeds. They’re the ones who’ve outgrown the need to constantly position themselves above others. Who can celebrate a friend’s success without mentally comparing it to their own. Who can receive criticism without it becoming an existential threat.
The ego wants to be right. Peace is comfortable being nothing.
The Problem-Finding Machine
Your mind is a problem-finding machine. That’s literally its job, to scan for threats, to find what’s wrong, to prepare for disaster.
It’s a brilliant evolutionary adaptation that’s being completely fucking misused in modern life.
You get a text: “Can we talk tomorrow instead of today?”
The anxious mind immediately spirals:
- He’s mad at me
- I did something wrong
- They’re going to end our friendship/relationship/work arrangement
- My life is falling apart
All from a simple scheduling change.
This isn’t heightened awareness. It’s not sensitivity or intelligence or depth. It’s a mind that’s been trained to find problems where none exist. Heard of something called anxiety? Overthinking?
The pattern plays out in relationships constantly. One person says something completely neutral, and the other hears criticism. One person needs space, and the other interprets abandonment. One person offers help, and the other feels insulted.
The mind that finds problems in everything is incapable of peace. And the culture we’ve built rewards this mindset – we call it “vigilance” or “having high standards” when really it’s just suffering wearing a fancy hat.
The Change Loop
Remember what I wrote about the infinite loop of self-improvement in a previous post? It’s the same pattern where people endlessly consume personal development content, perpetually “work on themselves,” yet mysteriously never arrive anywhere.
The cruel irony is that even if they made every change they claim to want, they still wouldn’t find lasting happiness. Because happiness was never meant to be permanent.
If they were honest with themselves, what they might find is peace. Not the absence of difficulty, but the profound recognition that difficulty doesn’t define them.
Finding Your Way Back
I don’t pretend this is easy. We’re fighting against our neural wiring, cultural programming, and an entire economy built around keeping us dissatisfied.
But the path back to peace exists. It looks like this:
- Stop making discomfort mean something about you. Feeling anxious, sad, or scared doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re human.
- Question the stories you tell about neutral events. When someone cancels plans, a project gets delayed, or life throws a curveball, separate the facts from your interpretations.
- Seek meaning over temporary feeling states. Build your life around what matters, not what gives you momentary pleasure or relief.
- Practice sitting in uncertainty without reaching for resolution. Not knowing is not dying.
- Release your addiction to fixing everything. Some things just are. Not everything needs to be solved, improved, or optimized.
The Real Truth
The peace you’re seeking has been available all along. It wasn’t hidden in the next achievement or purchase. It wasn’t waiting at the end of your self-improvement checklist.
It was there in the moments between your thoughts. In the breath you didn’t even notice you were taking. In the space where you temporarily stopped trying to become someone else.
Peace doesn’t care about your follower count. Peace doesn’t need everyone to agree with you. Peace doesn’t require a perfect body or a perfect life.
Peace only asks that you stop fighting with reality. That you stop needing things to be different before you can be okay.
And in that surrender , that realistic, clear-eyed surrender, you’ll find what happiness could never give you: the unshakeable knowing that whatever comes, you’ll be alright.
A Final Thought
When I personally think about peace, my mind returns to a moment on the Arctic ice in Svalbard a few months ago. It represented, and still does, my own obsessive pursuit, my own Ahab moment. We had just completed a very tough day of tracking and my mind went all over the place. Why am I doing this? Am I supposed to feel happy right now? Because I don’t think I do. Is this a waste of time?
Nothing about that moment registered as “happy” on any conventional scale. My body was in revolt, the conditions brutal beyond measure. But there was this moment – this singular, crystalline moment – where I stopped fighting against the discomfort and simply accepted it.
The peace that washed over me wasn’t born from ease; it emerged from complete surrender to the moment I had consciously chosen.
That’s the hidden truth about peace: it often arrives not when you’re comfortable, but when you finally stop resisting what is. When you look directly at the harsh reality in front of you and say, “This too. I choose this too.”
The deepest peace I’ve ever known wasn’t found on beaches or in meditation retreats. It found me on the ice in the Arctic in a moment of complete acceptance.
Where will you find yours?
Stay safe.
And don’t forget to be awesome.
