Okay folks, it's been awhile and I'm suffering from a goddamnable case of insomnia... I may prattle on for some time.
What is happiness? Do we know? I think the more important question is the latter. Would we know, I'm talking wing and a prayer here, what happiness, our happiness, really is if we saw it? It wouldn't be much different than Love at first sight. How many believe in that? I digress. For years we have heard to be happy with what we have (or in the analogy of True Love, if you don't have the one you love, love the one you're with). This is a defeatist view that I've never liked. It's called settling. In the broader sense it's very practical. That 45" flat plasma television is oh so slick but you can get by with your old 30" picture tube just as well. Yes all you James Bond wannabes wish to cruise around town in the Aston Martin Vanquish. It isn't pracitical or needed. Neither is the bigger SUV. Do you know that?
Settling. A philosophy that should be ignored when it comes to the search for happiness. Back to the point. Are we capable of spotting happiness if we met him/her/it on the street? Must happiness find us and cause the epiphany from which we will realize how lucky we are; that we have found happiness? Sorry to have wasted your time but this cannot be answered. If you wish to know my own views read on.
Happiness is at least two fold. The first fold is necessity. The first part of happiness is the fulfilment of our needs. On this level, all humans (possibly all animals) are equal. The starving tribes in Africa only wish for food, water, security and good health; society. If those are achieved, the person is happy. It's the same for the white collar banker with the big house and guzzling SUV. He can be happy with those base things. It's the second fold that makes him, and the majority of Americans (the majority of the civilized world) unhappy.
The second fold is the completion of our wants and desires. This is a nasty bugger because it concerns the things we could do without. Toys, services rendered, avarice in its disguised form of commercialism. Many have been convinced that all the bells and whistles we have are happiness. I won't be happy unless I see my favorite TV show. I'd be happy if I had more time. I wish I was married, I wish I had a child; these are concerns that have very little to do with us completing them and more on them working things out on their own and occurring. For those religious, this would be the Will of God. This second fold seems never able to be satiated. It doesn't need to be. To make the absence or loss of wants bearable we must learn they are not needed. Allow me to be humble and use myself as an example: I sit in a borrowed room in front of my Mac, surrounded by books, games, my toys, my clothes, my long ago expressions of Artism. I am unhappy. If I just get up and walk outside, a full moon is precarious crossing the clear dark blue sky, crickets chirp, the eastern sky is the opposite blue in the spectrum with traces of pink appearing. I realize my belly if satiated if not full. My head doesn't hurt, the burning fever I thought was coming on has lifted during the night. My breathing is normal and no one eyes me strangely or wishes to do me harm. By moving out away from the things I use to try to make myself happy I become happy. The problems of my life (which I'm too private to go into here, sorry) still exist, yet they are meaningless in the face of serenity. Ah, serenity that point where all things are created equal and cast off, baring the sould within to the soul of the universe. Is serenity actually happiness? No. But until you find serenity you won't find happiness.
As an addendum, let me say: Afraid to put this one morsel into the second fold I list it here outside of such so each reader can decide where it belongs; is it a want that needs to be stowed with the others, is it worthy of its own fold of happiness or is it just as I've called it, an exception to the rule, place outside and held liable to nothing but itself. I talk of dreams. Not hopes or wishes but dreams. Aspirations. Each person has a yearning inside of them. To the fickle, it's to gain riches; to the giving it is a life's devotion to helping others. Those are extremes of course. People want to live comfortably, their hopes not on the big TV but on a house that is big enough to fit their family; some want a puppy or a pony. Some want only the love of another. Dreams are outside the second fold, I believe, because it is needed. People must hunger for something. To attain their dream and to maintain it once it is theirs. Without a dream a life has no meaning, the spark has been extinguished. It is the plague of the retiree, who's usefulness is gone. They have awoken from the dream, become bittered by it and gnashes their crooked or false teeth at the young and tell them to be happy with what they've got. To settle. It is the voice of a defeated soul, a soul that has given up the search for happiness.
So is that it? Is it the search and not the "eureka" of finding happiness that we must crave? Again, I feel I may have wasted your time for I don't know that answer. Only those who have gone on, be it to a Heaven or merely as a corpse in a box, know for sure. I have my dreams still though I worry sometimes they are unattainable. Do I continue on or do I settle? It's a personal conundrum we all must answer. If you are enlightened to your dream, to that thing that will make you whole and happy in your wholeness I say you're on the right track.
Anything is better than finding your worth of happiness in the casing of metal you call a car or measuring your faux happiness by the size of your screen.
What is happiness? Do we know? I think the more important question is the latter. Would we know, I'm talking wing and a prayer here, what happiness, our happiness, really is if we saw it? It wouldn't be much different than Love at first sight. How many believe in that? I digress. For years we have heard to be happy with what we have (or in the analogy of True Love, if you don't have the one you love, love the one you're with). This is a defeatist view that I've never liked. It's called settling. In the broader sense it's very practical. That 45" flat plasma television is oh so slick but you can get by with your old 30" picture tube just as well. Yes all you James Bond wannabes wish to cruise around town in the Aston Martin Vanquish. It isn't pracitical or needed. Neither is the bigger SUV. Do you know that?
Settling. A philosophy that should be ignored when it comes to the search for happiness. Back to the point. Are we capable of spotting happiness if we met him/her/it on the street? Must happiness find us and cause the epiphany from which we will realize how lucky we are; that we have found happiness? Sorry to have wasted your time but this cannot be answered. If you wish to know my own views read on.
Happiness is at least two fold. The first fold is necessity. The first part of happiness is the fulfilment of our needs. On this level, all humans (possibly all animals) are equal. The starving tribes in Africa only wish for food, water, security and good health; society. If those are achieved, the person is happy. It's the same for the white collar banker with the big house and guzzling SUV. He can be happy with those base things. It's the second fold that makes him, and the majority of Americans (the majority of the civilized world) unhappy.
The second fold is the completion of our wants and desires. This is a nasty bugger because it concerns the things we could do without. Toys, services rendered, avarice in its disguised form of commercialism. Many have been convinced that all the bells and whistles we have are happiness. I won't be happy unless I see my favorite TV show. I'd be happy if I had more time. I wish I was married, I wish I had a child; these are concerns that have very little to do with us completing them and more on them working things out on their own and occurring. For those religious, this would be the Will of God. This second fold seems never able to be satiated. It doesn't need to be. To make the absence or loss of wants bearable we must learn they are not needed. Allow me to be humble and use myself as an example: I sit in a borrowed room in front of my Mac, surrounded by books, games, my toys, my clothes, my long ago expressions of Artism. I am unhappy. If I just get up and walk outside, a full moon is precarious crossing the clear dark blue sky, crickets chirp, the eastern sky is the opposite blue in the spectrum with traces of pink appearing. I realize my belly if satiated if not full. My head doesn't hurt, the burning fever I thought was coming on has lifted during the night. My breathing is normal and no one eyes me strangely or wishes to do me harm. By moving out away from the things I use to try to make myself happy I become happy. The problems of my life (which I'm too private to go into here, sorry) still exist, yet they are meaningless in the face of serenity. Ah, serenity that point where all things are created equal and cast off, baring the sould within to the soul of the universe. Is serenity actually happiness? No. But until you find serenity you won't find happiness.
As an addendum, let me say: Afraid to put this one morsel into the second fold I list it here outside of such so each reader can decide where it belongs; is it a want that needs to be stowed with the others, is it worthy of its own fold of happiness or is it just as I've called it, an exception to the rule, place outside and held liable to nothing but itself. I talk of dreams. Not hopes or wishes but dreams. Aspirations. Each person has a yearning inside of them. To the fickle, it's to gain riches; to the giving it is a life's devotion to helping others. Those are extremes of course. People want to live comfortably, their hopes not on the big TV but on a house that is big enough to fit their family; some want a puppy or a pony. Some want only the love of another. Dreams are outside the second fold, I believe, because it is needed. People must hunger for something. To attain their dream and to maintain it once it is theirs. Without a dream a life has no meaning, the spark has been extinguished. It is the plague of the retiree, who's usefulness is gone. They have awoken from the dream, become bittered by it and gnashes their crooked or false teeth at the young and tell them to be happy with what they've got. To settle. It is the voice of a defeated soul, a soul that has given up the search for happiness.
So is that it? Is it the search and not the "eureka" of finding happiness that we must crave? Again, I feel I may have wasted your time for I don't know that answer. Only those who have gone on, be it to a Heaven or merely as a corpse in a box, know for sure. I have my dreams still though I worry sometimes they are unattainable. Do I continue on or do I settle? It's a personal conundrum we all must answer. If you are enlightened to your dream, to that thing that will make you whole and happy in your wholeness I say you're on the right track.
Anything is better than finding your worth of happiness in the casing of metal you call a car or measuring your faux happiness by the size of your screen.