A reality about help

It is always a lovely thing to cheer someone up. Given our globally communicated reality, we can all cheer up friends anywhere around the world. Even in our daily lives it’s always possible to cheer someone up.

But this runs a risk.

When someone is cheered up by someone else, there lies a gamble of addiction or dependency. That’s because if you look hard enough, you will find someone nice enough to cheer you up and people in general become your “fix”.

For some time, I’ve followed a person on Instagram and I’ve seen this addiction take control of this person’s life. They always manage to be sad, angry, frustrated or what have you and their feed is full of people, kind wonderful people, offering support.

Here’s my worry expressed in a formula:

Sad / angry / pouty = love and support

If they say they’re ugly, they’re told they’re beautiful. If they say life sucks, they’re given hope and it continues that way because it’s learned behavior and at least for this person, it never stops and it is never enough.

The reality is that for it to last, happiness needs to come from within. Otherwise you’ll always need to depend on someone else to find something you already have within... and that’s not much help at all.