Happiness

The Pursuit of Happiness

One of our core freedoms is the pursuit of happiness. When you really think about it, everything we do is in
the name of this pursuit. Money, power, sex, drugs all make us happy in some manner. We think we need
them even if in the long run maybe happiness isn’t what they give us. Or maybe we sacrifice short term for
what we believe will be long-term happiness. Regardless, our goal in the end is happiness. We
aggressively pursue this happiness. We will do anything to attain it. It is our true currency, our societal
trump card. We are capitalists to the bone but it isn’t money that really drives us it is happiness. People
say that nobody ever has enough money. No matter how much you have you always want more. It is what
drives our economy. The never-ending desire for more. Perhaps an even more intriguing and troubling
truth is that we are just as greedy about happiness. No matter how happy a person is or how many goals
they have achieved they always find some way in which they could be happier. They always find something
that can be improved. Something new to fix. We can always be happier. We always want to be happier.
How can anyone ever truly be happy when they are trying so hard to be happier? Maybe this is where we’
ve gone wrong. Maybe our idea of happiness is just too capitalistic. Maybe we should be open to just
being rather than being happy.
In general we define most things by their negatives. You can’t have freedom without someone being
captive or at least not free. We define conformity and even our entire culture by what we consider to be
deviant. Without these opposites there is no comprehension of meaning. We do not exist without
someone else to show us who we are not. We even talk about how a perfect society with perfectly happy
people would not be perfect because they don’t know what they have. Without sadness there would be no
happiness. Wouldn’t it make sense that a person who knows sadness the best would also be able to know
happiness the best? So many people do their best to avoid the bad. It would seem that these people
would be shortchanging themselves when it came to experiencing the good. Or even worse, what if
avoiding the bad is the same as avoiding the good. That inner conflict between the good and the bad
within yourself, the happy and the sad, could be necessary to feeling. At any given moment maybe that
sadness you find is what makes you happy. Maybe that is the real reason we spend so much time finding
something to improve is because without something wrong we don’t feel right.
At the same time my greatest moments of happiness that I can remember are all moments of feeling
content. Nothing sexy there. Just content. Or apathetic. Maybe both. Content to the point of apathy?
Absolutely. Where there are no desires left but to remain in the moment. It passes as all moments must.
But at that moment there doesn’t appear to be sadness. Perhaps it is those moments in which I truly
embrace the sadness though. The sadness that the moment must end, the sad beauty of desiring nothing,
the wish that the world was so simple. To want nothing, even more happiness, may be what it is to be truly
happy. Except how do you want to want nothing? How do you find a place that you never want to leave?
Except who would want to stay forever? Not me. So is my pursuit of happiness just a constant tug of war
between 'now what?' and contented peace? I have no answers. Just a nagging feeling that it is distinctly
possible that we are going about life in a way that won’t lead us where we want to go.