🌑 Now I Have Neither Happiness nor Unhappiness. Everything Passes.

🌑 Now I Have Neither Happiness nor Unhappiness. Everything Passes. – Osamu Dazai

Have you ever felt like you’re stuck in between?

Not joyful, not sorrowful. Just… existing.
That strange state where the highs don’t lift you, and the lows don’t crush you. Osamu Dazai captures this hauntingly well:

“Now I have neither happiness nor unhappiness. Everything passes.”

It feels almost empty—yet profoundly freeing. Let’s explore why.

🔄 The Flow of Time: Nothing Lasts Forever

Dazai reminds us that both happiness and unhappiness are temporary. The joy you’re clinging to? It fades. The pain you’re drowning in? It too passes.

This isn’t pessimism—it’s perspective. Life isn’t meant to be held onto; it’s meant to be experienced, moment by moment.

📌 Real-life example:

• Remember when exams felt like the end of the world? Yet, months later, they became a faint memory.

• Or when heartbreak seemed unbearable? Years later, it’s just a story you tell.

Everything passes. Always.

🧘 Stoic Echo: Equanimity is Power

The Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus, taught the same lesson centuries before Dazai: true peace lies not in chasing joy or avoiding sorrow, but in transcending both.

• Happiness is sweet but fleeting.

• Unhappiness is bitter but fleeting.

• Equanimity—calm acceptance—is eternal.

When you realize everything passes, you stop fighting reality. Instead, you flow with it.

💡 Action Steps: Living with "Everything Passes"

Here’s how you can apply this mindset today:

1. Pause before reacting. When you’re angry, remind yourself: this too will pass.

2. Savor without clinging. When you’re happy, enjoy it fully—but don’t demand it lasts forever.

3. Journal daily. Write down one joy and one worry. Revisit them weeks later—you’ll see how both faded.

4. Practice gratitude. Even in neutrality, there’s beauty—like breathing, or simply being alive.

🌌 A Modern Take: Neutral Doesn’t Mean Empty

Many fear neutrality because it feels like “nothingness.” But neutrality can actually be freedom.

• No chains of clinging to joy.

• No prison of resisting pain.

• Just the flow of existence.

📌 Think of the ocean.
Waves rise (happiness), waves fall (unhappiness), but the deep sea remains calm and steady. You can live like that—deep, steady, unshaken.

✨ Key Lesson: Let It Pass, Let Yourself Be

Osamu Dazai wasn’t glorifying emptiness—he was whispering a truth we often ignore: peace is found when you stop fighting the impermanence of life.

Instead of asking, “How can I stay happy forever?” ask, “How can I remain at peace no matter what comes?”

That’s where true freedom lies.

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