The Pursuit of Happiness

We all assume that men are rational beings. Left alone, they will do what’s best for their own interest, make rational decisions, follow their instincts and carry on their own pursuit of happiness.

The reality is far from it. But what is happiness, really?

We’ve grown up being told what happiness means, and what our path to it is going to be like. Today, there are so many different people telling us what it is. Our parents tell us to go to school, study hard, get a job, get married, have children, make them go to school, study hard and get a job, and boom: Happiness. The media tells you that happiness comes from opening a bottle of Coca-Cola, or wearing expensive clothes, or eating expensive food, or owning an expensive car. The word happiness is one of the most overused words in ads.

What has this lead to? We’ve started attaching happiness to material goods. Our happiness can be summed up as follows:
Current happiness = [What you have now] — [What you had before]
We have now successfully turned our pursuit of happiness, into a pursuit of more and more material goods.

“Happiness is a myth we seek,
If manifested surely irks;
Like river speeding to the plain,
On its arrival slows and murks.
For man is happy only in
His aspiration to the heights;
When he attains his goal, he cools
And longs for other distant flights.”
— Kahlil Gibran

Its a trap. (In case you hadn’t picked up on that already)

“There is only one cause of unhappiness: the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them.” — Anthony de Mello

So what really makes you happy?

Happiness means different things to different people, but at it’s core, it’s something intrinsic. As Leo Tolstoy puts it, “If you want to be happy, be.”
You can choose to be happy. Right now. So do it. Smile.
You’re Welcome. :)