We were talking on the phone. At some point, I asked her how she was going. She said she randomly feels nervous especially when she's not doing things, and it threw a question to me: Are we able to feel happy about ourselves without doing anything? In other words, is there any valuable thing in our own bare existence, and can we evaluate that? Well, that's quite a question. Imagine you were thrown into jail for life. You can never see anyone. Somehow you don't starve to death. Your body is not hurt at all. The worst problem here is, you still feel, and you still think...now, can you say you are happy? Or should I say, can you imagine that you can be happy for the rest of your life? It depends on how you define your happiness. In my opinion, there are two different types of happiness. The first is experiential happiness like people say about "happiness". The other is metaphysical happiness, which I'm gonna explain. So, like in the thought experiment, if you are deprived of any means to experience happy moments in your life, then you would feel that you are not happy. But there's still room to be happy by yourself. As long as you can think and feel, I would say, there's an "a priori" type of happiness built into your consciousness. Because the fundamental condition to be able to think and feel, is to be happy in the first place. It must be happy enough to think and feel. Otherwise, you're already dead or crazy. I mean, not intact. Our consciousness is the act of maintenance for this fundamental happiness. So as long as you can think and feel, you have to assume that you're -- a priori -- happy. But the thing is, this is hidden behind our consciousness. We cannot experience it. Some would say that kind of happiness does not exist at all, and there's no wonder about it. Since my current attitude is quite pragmatic, I would say, this kind of idea is going to help you to get rid of your vulnerability. My argument is that you should keep in mind that there's another kind of happiness as I mentioned. Let's see. The world is full of absurdity. Maybe life sucks after all. Sometimes you feel happy, but sometimes not. But you've gotta survive this shit. We can't be optimistic in the first place. Because our self-consciousness is such a hellhole (This is why people commit suicide). The longer you pursue experiential happiness, the more you find different types of tragedy. However, you can't help pursuing experience, which means you fucking live. You know, some people try to climb Mt. Everest and sometimes fucking die, because climbing a mountain is very seductive. We're in love with our world of experience. You may be desperate about your life, the whole experiences in your life. But you need to be strong enough to go against the inevitable absurdity in life. Okay, then how can I be strong enough? Well, so that's where you can have this idea: Whatever happens in your life, you're definitely happy as long as you are intact. Because you can always assume and appreciate your own bare existence. However you feel sad, you can say that you're still happy in a way. There you might start to appreciate your sadness because that means you live. And I also believe that this type of strength can help you to live a "good life" in a way. Because if you're always happy about your self-existence, you're not going to waste your damn time being annoyed by experiential randomness. You're no longer affected by your anxiety. You're going to be determined. You know what you're up to and just do the shit for your own life. Enjoy. (Still, there's an issue about what you're up to, but I think it's another issue. You might need to read "Nausea" by J.P. Sartre.)