What Should I Do When I Have 7 Girlfriends and Still Am Not Happy?

Nik Art, Emotions, Happiness, Philosophy, Quora, Relationships

You’ve probably never seen this picture:

It’s called The Circle of the Lustful: Francesca da Rimini by William Blake, 1826. Sometimes it’s called The Whirlwind of Lovers.

It shows one of Dante’s 9 circles of hell, the first of the seven deadly sins: lust.

I’m not going to lecture you on monogamy here, the point the picture makes is this: endless passion is like a never-ending storm, which, eventually, you won’t be able to control.

You’ll forever be tossed about by feelings. That’s not a good way to live your life, as Seneca noted some 2,000 years ago:

So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about.

I don’t think you’re unhappy in spite of having seven girlfriends. I think you’re unhappy because of it.

The less sailors are on board, the more control the captain has.

Are you the captain of your ship?

Nik

Niklas Göke writes for dreamers, doers, and unbroken optimists. A self-taught writer with more than a decade of experience, Nik has published over 2,000 articles. His work has attracted tens of millions of readers and been featured in places like Business Insider, CNBC, Lifehacker, and many others. Nik has self-published 2 books thus far, most recently 2-Minute Pep Talks. Outside of his day job and daily blog, Nik loves reading, video games, and pizza, which he eats plenty a slice of in Munich, Germany, where he resides.