Right Answers Only: Just be happy

Seasonal Affective Disorder — S.A.D. for short — is a mood disorder that often occurs during times of the year when the days are shorter and daylight is hard to come by. Anchorage — where UAA is located — happens to be a place that gets minimal daylight during the winter, with the days being as short as 5.5 hours on and around the winter solstice. 

The shortness of these days, in combination with daylight savings time “removing” an hour during the winter, leaves many people stuck inside the whole time the sun is above the horizon. As such, it is incredibly common for those who experience S.A.D. to be acutely aware of how dark it is outside during the winter — feeling more sluggish and depressed as a result.

What if people didn’t have to feel this way? Why is it that happiness is so binary? If the sun is up, people are happy, and if it’s not, people aren’t? 

I think this kind of approach to feeling happy is foolish. Happiness shouldn’t be tied to something that varies wildly throughout the year like sunlight. In fact, S.A.D. is not real, and you should just be happy.

Firstly, to clear up the facts around Seasonal Affective Disorder, while I have characterized it as being tied to there being less sunlight, that is only the case with winter-pattern S.A.D. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, there is also summer-pattern S.A.D., which — if the name wasn’t indicative enough — occurs in the summer months. 

However, in both cases, people are placing their mood in the hands of something painted onto the sky — as I have proven before, the sun and moon are not real — instead of taking matters into their own hands. Why? 

The answer is simple: Big Light Therapy.

You see, back in 1984 Dr. Norman Rosenthal was one of the first people to “discover” S.A.D. and determine that the best treatment for it was light therapy. It was this choice of prescribing light therapy that led to so many people feeling down in the winter in modern times. 

The problem with prescribing a treatment where someone can profit off it is that once the treatment becomes mainstream, the person profiting from it doesn’t want that money train to suddenly come to a screeching halt. 

By creating the diagnosis of S.A.D. and prescribing mood lights to patients, Dr. Rosenthal created an incredibly lucrative business model for the light therapy industry.

Currently generating over $1 billion annually, Big Light continues to hoodwink millions around the world into tying their health to a glowing panel.

So how do you take back your happiness from the light therapy industry and put it back in your own hands? One solution might already be in your hands if you’re reading this article on a device.

What big light doesn’t want you to know is that, despite how minimally effective light therapy truly is, if you absolutely have to tie your mood to a glowing light source, you already have a phone or computer. 

When people started to realize how happy they felt while using phones and laptops as a substitute for light therapy, big light started putting out anti-device programming such as the highly successful “Screenagers” documentary, released in 2016.

By creating this propaganda that painted the effects of extended screen time as being detrimental to the mental health of those who used devices frequently, people quickly set their devices down and went back to buying light boxes to make them happy. This reinforced the idea to the public that S.A.D. was a real thing, and that the only real way to solve it is by buying yet another light box. 

In reality, all the happiness you could ever need is contained in your device. Some of the best ways to feel incredibly happy on a device is by going on social media for hours and hours, engaging in a conversation with a large language model such as ChatGPT or even playing fun and soothing games such as “Clash Royale” on your phone or “League of Legends” on your laptop. These positive activities, among others, highlight just how much better it is to tie your happiness to a phone or laptop instead of a light box. 

Another way to be happy is by just thinking happy thoughts. 

What so many people forget is that, by thinking thoughts that are sad, they will be S.A.D. Whereas if they replace those thoughts with happy ones, they will immediately be happy. The brain is very good at thinking whatever you tell it to think. If you tell it to think negatively, it will continue to spiral until you’re sitting in your dark room 24/7. 

However, if you can hijack your brain and harness your free will to convince yourself that you’re truly happy, you will be happy as a result. This is a case where Big Light and Big Therapy have been working in tandem to try to keep this concept secret. 

By making S.A.D. seem like it is out of someone’s control, not only will they seek help from a “professional” for it, but they will buy a light box when in reality the power to change their mood is entirely in their own head.

Another thing that’s entirely in your head is the weather being so bad you can’t possibly go out and enjoy life, instead forcing yourself to stay inside and bundle up. A very wise person once told me that “it’s not the weather, it’s your gear” and that person could not have been more right. By making the mental choice that it’s somehow too cold and dark to go outside, you’re already losing the battle.

Instead, by going to an outdoor outfitter and dropping a few hundred dollars on winter gear instead of light boxes, you too can look like the Michelin Man in order to get out and enjoy the beauty of Anchorage in the winter. By taking the onus off the weather to be good and putting it on yourself to be outfitted properly for the conditions, you very quickly run out of excuses to stay inside and shut down — and will rapidly find yourself not feeling so down anymore.

At the end of the day, S.A.D. is quite literally all in your head. It is a lie that has been perpetuated by major industries — like Big Light — when in reality your happiness is determined by you. So instead of staying inside with your happy light this winter, just have a conversation with yourself in the mirror and just be happy.