There is no person in the history of humanity who’s ever maintained a single emotion permanently.

The idea—like that sort of American ideal, the pursuit of happiness—people actually think that means the emotion happiness.

That’s why they probably shouldn’t have used that word.

Now, the pursuit of meaningfulness, perhaps, or the pursuit of endeavours that challenge you and give you a sense of purpose—sure. Even that can’t be maintained permanently.

But happiness, a single emotion?

I mean, you’re literally a chemistry set—you can’t maintain emotions. They all sort of fade and wear off and are replaced by others.

If you were happy all the time, you’d go insane.

Can you imagine being happy at a funeral?

Imagine being happy when you’re stuck in traffic and missing an important meeting that you know is going to cost you millions of dollars.

It doesn’t even make sense to be happy in those situations—it would actually be counterproductive.

There are certain situations where you’ve got to be angry, you’ve got to be sad, you’ve got to be confused in order to be humble about your knowledge, and so on.

If you’re happy all the time, there’s no motivation.

Happiness is not a motivational tool—guilt is.

Anger is.

Frustration is.

Confusion is.

To dive deeper into this topic, check out the original video here: