TL;DR
To achieve lasting happiness, we must learn to say “no” even to good things. This is necessary to avoid excess, make wise trade-offs, and preserve our baseline of happiness when fleeting pleasures risk disrupting our long-term contentment. True well-being comes from discerning what aligns with sustainable joy and balanced living.
While there are countless things (ideas and material things) that have bearings on our lives, and over which we have no control, there is also an enormous lot over which we must grant or deny the permission to have bearings on our lives. Very often, these things can be put into two generic buckets: the things that are good for us, and the things that are bad for us. Our hyper-hedonistic culture has predisposed most of us to be ruthless about avoiding everything that is bad; what it has not done – and perhaps should have done – is to help us cultivate a healthy relationship with good things. If we seek a happy life, it is equally important to not accept every good thing as it is to not run away from every bad thing; we must learn to discern when it is in our best interest to say no to good things.
Broadly speaking, there are two situations in which it is wiser to say no to good things. The first of these reasons, ignored as it often is, has been significantly developed and spoken about; and stems from the idea that ethical behaviour (to be broadly understood as encompassing behaviour that is not only commendable but also helpful to its undertaker) is to be found in the mean of both the good and bad. According to proponents of this idea, in the same way that ethics compels us to elevate ourselves from an excess of that which is bad, it too, compels us to momentarily climb down from the high horse of that which is good. There is legitimate debate on the existence of things that are to be approached from an absolute embrace/avoid position by virtue of their being either good or bad. These debates have implications for a healthy relationship with good things as presented herein; for if there are no absolutes, then we must abide by the ethical principle of the mean in rejecting excess, and if there are indeed absolutes, then our relationship to them is properly considered in the second reason we are about to explore.
The second reason why we must say no to good things is that our wellbeing is directly correlated with our ability to acclimate ourselves in our environment. The implication being, that we must say no to good things to the extent to which they are unsustainable deviations from our environment. Let us imagine, for example, that the owner of a luxurious mansion, is about to embark upon a month’s long journey to a far away land. In an act of kindness, this owner announces to her house maid that for the next month, she could pack out of the humble maid quarters and move into the luxurious mansion. Should the maid accept the offer? What implications does her decision have on her short-term and long-term happiness? If the maid decides to move into the mansion, she maximizes her immediate happiness and increases her baseline happines with zero prospect of maintaining this new baseline, at best, will need to recondition her mind to find contentment in her old quarters, or, at worst, lose the ability to appreciate them entirely.
All happiness that we derive from a thing that is alien to our environment progressively elevates our baseline level of happiness. This can be particularly dangerous when the fleeting happiness experienced is not one that can be aspired to under normal consequences, and for which the ability to delay gratification can be a good hedge against elevating baseline levels of happiness; sometimes we have to say no to good things not because saying no guarantees a greater reward in the future, but because there is no reward in the future, and we are better off not expecting one.
It is possible that some may take issue with these arguments by virtue of the fact that they seem to support a given school of ethics. What will the epicureans say of this? What will the hedonists say about this? In response, one should observe that all schools of ethics and their differing views of where happiness is to be found are nonetheless united in their aspiration to a certain kind of perpetuity. The hedonist and the epicurean do not seek to maximise pleasure today and not tomorrow, and the stoic is altogether similar in his pursuit of an enduring state of self-leadership. It follows that saying no, in a bid to not lose acclimatization to our environment, is not incompatible with any ethical understanding of happiness; one could also argue very correctly, that such an approach seeks to revert the environment (as opposed to the action) to a mean state; by which arguments the two reasons stated above withstand the objection.
In our pursuit of happiness, it is not enough to simply embrace what is good and avoid what is bad. True wisdom lies in discerning when to say “no” to good things, whether to avoid excess, make necessary trade-offs, or protect the stability of our baseline happiness. Good things, while inherently appealing, can sometimes distract us from deeper, more sustainable contentment. By learning to say “no” judiciously, we assert control over our lives, align our actions with enduring principles of well-being, and cultivate the resilience to thrive in an ever-changing world. In doing so, we not only safeguard our happiness but also preserve the balance essential for a life well-lived.