My thoughts on happiness
Most people say that they want to be happy. One day I asked one of my friends, what is the goal of his life and he simply said he just want to be happy. Everybody like to be happy and they hate being sad. I kept thinking what is happiness? Is being happy the purpose of this life? Are we doing everything we do to be happy? Or is happiness just an illusion we delude ourselves with?
Happiness is a feeling that we get when we achieve something, or when we get something we want. We feel happy when we are around our loved ones. But the moment we achieve something or we fall in love or make a new friend we also take the risk of losing them. Losing those things will make us sad. So according to my point of view, we can’t be happy and expect to be not sad because everything we achieve or everyone we meet in our life is temporary. One way or another we will lose them. So the sacrifice you have to pay to be happy is to take the risk of being sad in future. Happiness does not exist without the concept of sadness. Happiness and sadness is like light and darkness. We cannot explain one term without the other. One term does not exist without the other. So if we want to be not sad we should be able to give up happiness. This is the idea behind Buddhism or at least it’s how I see. We feel happy when we get things we like, so to be happy we have to like things. If we give up liking something we won’t feel happy after we get that thing but the benefit is we won’t be sad when we lose it. That doesn’t not mean we have to hate that thing. If we hate something we will be sad to have it in the first place. It’s a state in between like and dislike. It’s a state where we don’t love it or hate it.
I sometimes view happiness and sadness like two sides of a math equation.
Happiness = sadness
If we increase happiness, to balance that sadness will also increase and vice versa. If happiness is zero sadness will also be zero. So if happiness is a factor predicated upon its opposite factor which is sadness, can it be the answer to purpose of life?
Even if this fact is true we cannot stop liking things in order to be not sad. Liking things is human nature. We like things and we want to get the things we like. So I would say we have to be humble when we achieve things and we have to have the understanding that this thing I achieved or have will be lost someday. So when the day comes we are prepared to let that thing go without suffering too much.
People say that they do everything in this world to be happy. People study well to have good careers to earn money so we could be happy in the future. But we sacrifice lot to that happiness. We give up our valuable time, our youth, our money, our energy the most important assets of one’s life. So are we willing to give up our young energetic selves to be rich old men? Or is there something more to it? I personally would choose my energetic younger self rather than be a rich old man. We could be rich and happy but if we are old we won’t have the same possibilities in life like we had when we are young. We will be limited by time as oppose to the limitless younger self we had.so I’m suggesting to the readers, don’t plan on being happy. Just be happy at the moment. Don’t work to be happy. Do work that makes you happy. Take a look around you and appreciate what you have now.
Well we all are trying to solve this puzzle of life but it’s easier said than done. People tell you to be happy but those people themselves aren’t happy most of the time. Happiness could be an illusion we delude ourselves to keep going in this life after all. But I believe that human mind is the most profound and powerful thing in the universe and even if we fail to find an answer to life we will do a pretty good job at interpreting it at least. So what better can we do than keep on searching?