“People tend to regard certain things in life as necessary for happiness, when if fact they aren’t. The term ‘focusing illusion’ comes from the idea that you can be focused on a particular aspect of life, so much so that you can believe your whole happiness depends on it. Some have the focusing illusion on, say, marriage as a prerequisite condition for happiness. In that case, they will feel unhappy as long as they remain single. Some will complain that they cannot be happy because they don’t have enough money, while others will be convinced they are unhappy because they don’t have a proper job.
“In having a focusing illusion, you create your own reason for feeling unhappy. If unhappiness is a vacuum in which the required element is absent, that vacuum is created by the biased imagination of the subject.”
Ken Mogi, Awakening Your Ikigai: How the Japanese Wake Up to Joy and purpose Every Day
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This pandemic has taught me that several things I might have casually considered necessary for my happiness in fact have no bearing on it.
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