The Real Pursuit Of Happiness?

Everyone has experienced it in their lives, from teething babies, to the elderly in their oxygen tents. It can be found in the most unusual and unexpected places, and has no real fixed location. Like a butterfly floating on a spring breeze, it can be hovering around one minute, and completely crushed the next. It is hopelessly delicate, and can be amazing allusive to a lot of people.

What I’m talking about so confusingly is happiness.

When you think about it, there is no real way to describe happiness. Knowing the many great minds on this site, I’m guessing that many of you would like to debate that with me. Well, I may elaborate on that thought. You can describe the feeling of happiness, but not what it really is. Yes, smart-ass, it is a feeling. An emotion, call it what you will. But that’s really a blanket term. And blanket terms, I find, never really capture the essence of an idea. In other words- Happiness can be categorised, felt, but never really concretely explained.

If you were to ask a five year old what happiness is, they’d probably cheerfully say something about baby animals, sunshine and colours. A teenager? Having fun with friends, partying or being allowed to make their own decisions. Someone a bit older? More money, a good job and less stress. Someone in the evening of his or her life? Perhaps more time, or to see their children make something of themselves. I wouldn’t know. Seeing as I’m at a particular stage myself, I can’t say I’ve experienced all of these things. But from these examples, do you notice something? The things that are thought to make a person happy differ greatly. I put that down to perspective changing as you get older, and gain more experience, blah, blah, blah. What I’m trying to get at is that the causes of happiness are not concrete.

Also, something else you might notice about these things is that they don’t necessarily make a person happy. Sure, you might initially think that they do, but it’s not always the case. After all, humans are notorious for wanting things that are probably worst for them. And, as well, the path to achieving such “happiness” can be a trial in itself. To take a universally understandable ideal as an example, think of the plight of women striving for the perfect body. With all the mutilation and self-hate they go through to achieve their goal for “happiness”, is it worth it? Not in the slightest. When they finally reach their goal they are too broken to recognise it and feel no happiness, which in turn forces them into keeping up their vicious priming. The search for happiness can be brutal and fatal.

What do I think happiness is? In my own personal opinion, I agree with a quote I once read in a Women’s Weekly magazine while I was waiting in an orthodontist’s office. ”In life, you can either have happiness, or search for meaning”. What I take from that quote is that happiness comes through the best when one stops searching for it. If you’re always looking for something, you analyse the future and past, meanwhile completely disregarding the present. The present is brief- so brief, that it can be debatable if it really exists and if it is really just a fusion between past and future. But, according to the person that came up with this quote, happiness is found most strongly in that miniscule moment. Think about it. What makes you happier- when someone does something completely out of the blue, or when they’ve been orchestrating it for months? Spontaneity is the answer I’m guessing most of you would pick.

The second part of that quote is the idea that if you search for meaning in life, you cannot be truly happy. How does that work out? Well, meaning is some very scary shit. To truly find a meaning, you have to delve into all sorts of dark places, and contemplate the most mentally draining ideas. Most geniuses are very unhappy people. Why? Because they force themselves to look at everything, and cannot leave out a single gritty detail. Wrapping your brain constantly around such gargantuan thoughts can warp reality for a person. Give it some thought- you are focusing so hard on what reality is that you can’t truly appreciate the big picture for the tiny details. It’s kind of like looking at a picture very closely. You can’t make anything out because of the pixels.

So, to end this on a simple note, meaning =/= happiness. One cannot co-exist in harmony with the other. So, if you want to have a truly happy life, take my advice, and don’t become a philosopher. And as for those people that need to find a meaning before they die? I sympathise.

For really, I always choose meaning over happiness.