I get that this is about living; getting out and doing what one loves and having a sense of purpose. I notice a pattern with friends/clients that are struggling to feel happy, is that they are isolating, and, that they are not doing what they love, or even pursuing something to help them discover what that is. That the focus is INTERNAL.
This could explain what I read somewhere, where?!, that meditating can often make people feel worse. I’m not even sure if this is true…but the above could explain why for some people. Mindfulness and inquiry has really helped me but I am aware of how we can take that method as absolute. To just deceide to only do that or at least live life as though one is. Meaning one just stops focussing outwards – it all becomes internal all the time whether you’re meditating or not. Just sitting in the house actually lost in a sea of thoughts and emotions, which I know is not the same as meditating or mindfulness but somehow one confuses the two. Taking the teachings as a way to be in general. i.e watch your thoughts, be with what is, embrace the darkness, let the ‘negative’ be there..just live it all etc etc. I know it’s something I’ve fallen into many a time, of, ‘oh ok just being. DOing becomes the enemy, the problem. the more away from freedom, enlightenment. When one is ‘doing’ from this perspective questions may come in  such as ‘what am I running from?’ or we may get an uneasy feeling ‘I should/could be sitting with all of this’. I don’t know about you but I somehow took the teachings as having to be still, to go somehwere where I could do/be this, from outside influences, to sit. I never imagined I could apply this as I live my life whether ‘outside’ with others or inside with myself. I took it as a either or an or. You either live your life and escape it all and be in denial, or you stop, go within, close the door to the oustide world and face all your ‘demons’, meditate your life away until you reach some sort of peace, or non caring, or perhaps enlightenment.

Of course it’s not always that approach that can keep people in an internal world…can be any number of things the meditating was an example. It can also manifest it self with having therapy of some sort. We can come to the conclusion that once the therapy has cleared the depression then we can get out and start living our life. That we first need to therapise the problem that keeps us from going out or being external in the first place. And that is valid reasoning for sure…but then we can lose all sense of agency and it’s like we are waiting for another to fix us so that we can change.. We become even more stagnant. It’s life is on hold…just waiting for the change.

ANyway, there is a pattern I’m noticing. All the people in my life that struggling to feel good or to maintain any kind of happiness in their life, are living internal based lives. Their focus seems to be mainly on what is happening to them, within them, and what they are feeling in themselves. The world has narrowed down from ‘we’ to ‘i’. The default for this, unfortunately, is to isolate. Which makes sense of course. The more we see ourself as an individual the more likely to find areas of fault that can only be applied to ourselves now. If we are only with ourself then then the problem must be us. And when we feel bad about ourselves we want to retreat. The last thing we want to do is be with others, as we now feel less them then or we may have already felt that but as result of going more internal we feel even more less than.. It often ‘feels’ like the right thing to do, and yet, as so many studies have proven, the opposite is in fact what actually helps us to feel good. This makes me think back to when I studied Anthropology and how I learned that many indiginous tribes have a strong sense of togetherness, so much so that they rarely refer to themselves as ‘I’, but rather ‘we’.
The other thing I have noticed is that these people that isolate are not feeding their soul. By that I mean doing what one loves, what one enjoys, This could be dancing, creating things, playing music, singing, walking, participating in a book club, writing, being with a good friend, doing yoga etc.
Or/And they don’t ahve a sense of purpose. This can be something like a job you enjoy, helping out at acharity shop, helping in the community, looking after a friend, helping in some way with out over doing it.