Balanced emotions and happiness

Sustainable happiness needs balance. Balance in everything.
A perfect dish could turn into a distasteful jumble, if the ingredients don't balance each other out and the perfect remedy could turn into poison, if a disproportionate dose is administered.

We generally tend, in our quest for comfort and happiness, to aggressively seek enjoyable feeling, readily forgetting that to enjoy light, we need a bit of darkness and to enjoy sweetness we need sourness.

The answer is not "more".

Seeking more light will blind us and seeking more sweetness will blunt out taste buds and make us queazy.

To feel happiness, mindlessly seeking more of it is not realistic. Moments of basic serenity and contentment will make us enjoy simple moments of bliss more.

To enjoy sweetness we don't need to add more sugar, injecting some degree of sourness or blandness into our food will make us enjoy mildly sweetened dishes.

Having a low baseline is key.

For happiness it could be defined as a reference point that represents the normal condition against which changes in mood can be measured.

It is also the level to which our mood returns after disturbances or challenges.

When conflicts arise, the happiness baseline is our natural state to which our disposition returns once euphoria or sadness subsides. 

The higher our happiness baseline is, the more ressources and energy will be needed to maintain it. Simplicityis key here.

Our baseline for happiness should be easy to uphold, it will make it the perfect happy resting place for us after a challenging period of turmoil.