My own teacher tends to warn his students by saying, "beware of unhappy Buddhists, they're not really practicing, but just being intellectual". And I have sadly met many unhappy Buddhists, which is indeed a contradiction in terms.
I would also agree that the "mental baggage" has to be overcome, and that takes time, which will be different for each person. But I think that someone who really starts to achieve a little realisation โ and not merely intellectual knowledge โ will, at least, become easy-going and worry much, much less about everything.
Ironically for me, a few years before I started my first classes, my life was not prone to severe changes. Then an incredible lot of changes happened upon me, and, because I was not prepared to deal with them, I can say that I was extremely unhappy โ not depressed, but frustrated, because nothing I tried to accomplish would ever get right, and sometimes I really came close enough... just to see everything slipping by my fingers.
After I started training Buddhism in earnest, things certainly became more interesting. One one hand, the degree of changes (to the worst!) have increased dramatically at all levels โ personal, business, family, everything. It looked like after a couple of decades of stability and a relative peace of mind, now everything was striking back with a vengeance!
But fortunately, as my training progressed and became more serious, I just started to take all those things much less seriously. A car that breaks down? Well, nothing lasts forever. Work becoming scarce and payment becoming less and less? It's just how things are. My partner developing three chronical diseases almost at the same time and becoming unfit for work (but also not eligible for an early retirement)? Well, how does constantly worrying about all those things make you more "happy"?
I think that my partner and I are now extremely annoying people to our friends and family, because we don't take anything for granted. We don't make plans. We don't create huge expectations (which will never work out anyway). Sometimes good things happen to us, but we don't get terribly excited about them, either โ they will soon fade anyway. Even if they don't, so what? They're just... "things". We just don't take them so seriously any longer. When something good happens, we embrace the moment, take the opportunity to enjoy it for a while, then it fades, but we don't worry โ everything fades anyway, and it was good while it lasted. Similarly, even the worse disease or the biggest financial crisis will end, sooner or later, so it's pointless to worry all the way. I understand, from the reaction of some of my closest friends and family members, that we are quite irritating โ because we don't let anything affect us so much as before.
So, yes, we're much more easy-going; we worry less; we take few things so seriously as before; but we also enjoy ourselves much more with little things โ because we don't "expect" so much of them, and we're aware they cannot last much. And we try to give an example to others, although often we feel they reject our way of reacting to "disasters" and "catastrophes". On the other hand, they're often surprised why we're not constantly depressed and frustrated, because pretty much everything bad happens to us, and we just shrug it off, saying it's not really THAT important.
We're not careless, though. We're just carefree. We're also not indifferent; we just don't worry so much about things and are generally content. We're not saints, though; we still have fears and expectations. It's just that they're less "intense", if that's the right word. They don't feel so solid, so overwhelming. Instead, we are more aware that we create our own suffering because of the terrible things that happen to us, so, because it's our mind that suffers, we can change the way the mind works, and worry less about those things instead.
There are a few sayings that explain that what Buddhists are after is not really "happiness" โ in the common sense of the word, i.e., euphoria โ but going "beyond happiness" (and beyond suffering/insatisfaction too). I think that my partner and I have had a little taste of what that means. It's not really jumping up and down in excitement all the time, no matter what happens around us. But it's the ability to make jokes on a funeral, because everybody there is so sorry and frustrated and depressed, and someone has to lighten the mood a bit. It's having to stay at home having fun on the Internet because we cannot afford to go out and have some dinner and watch some movies โ and actually enjoy staying at home as much. So, yes, I would definitely say that we're way "more content" than before the Dharma, and that we have successfully avoided the two other extremes โ euphoria (when good things happen) and depression (when bad things happen) โ at least for now.
Life's trials and tribulations are simply less important and less serious. We're still not at the stage where we can laugh at the catastrophes; but we're certainly at the point where we find there is nothing really worth crying about.
