Page 49 - WhoAreWe...

What Makes Us Feel Good and Why

Everyone wants to feel good. It's as natural as anything we
feel. And as we can observe in everyday life, our
psychological make-up allows for many different ways to
accomplish this. The unfortunate thing is that there are any
number of these things that, while they might make us feel
good, we feel that way only because we have made other
people feel terrible. Remember the German word
schadenfreude? Some basic thing, different context.

Deriving pleasure from someone else's misfortune seems to
be another human fault or frailty, only reinforced by the
pleasure and satisfaction that early man (and not so early
men) must have felt after defeating his enemies, causing
them great personal misfortune. This is another built-in
problem that we all have to deal with to one extent or
another. As I have mentioned, we were likely put here to
figure out how to be better people and therefore transform
this negative energy into positive energy. Making the
distinctions regarding pleasure are a big part of all that. It's
time for all of us to exercise some self-introspection and
really ask ourselves what makes us feel good, and deep-
down, why?

So, what is pleasure, exactly? Well, we know
physiologically that due to any number of stimuli
something called endorphins are released in our brain and
we experience a feeling of deep personal satisfaction, joy,
rapture, contentment, happiness, and the list goes on. You
can throw in levels of excitement in there as well. Pain and
stress are magically relieved. This is all well and good, and
we are tempted to simply accept these gifts without further
contemplation. But the hard reality is that, as noted above,
there can be stimuli that includes other people's misfortune
or pain, and that is where our hard work must be done.

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