“I want to be happy!” No, you don’t.
You just don’t want to suffer meaninglessly.
Why do you go to school?
“To get a job,” you say.
Why do you need a job?
“To earn money,” you say.
Why do you need money?
“To buy and do the things I want to be happy,” you say.
Why do you want to be happy?
Silence.
“…”
More silence.
Your lips move up and down, as if you are trying to say something, but not a single word came out.
“… I don’t know.”
I have had this kind of dialogue for quite a while now. During multiple deep conversations with my friends, I asked chains of why? questions, out of curiosity, to understand them more deeply. But this chain of question always reached a dead end after this asking this question: “Why do you want to be happy?”
Most of us think we want to be happy because it feels good. It’s positive. And I should do something that feels positive, right? It seems pretty straightforward.
No.
After having roughly a hundred different dialogues about this topic, I now understand what people mean when they say, “I want to be happy.”
They don’t really mean they want to be happy. What they mean is something like this:
“I just don’t want to suffer miserably and meaninglessly.”
Here’s why:
Happiness is temporary. You won’t be happy every second of your life, even if you try your best to reach that goal in life. It’s simply not possible. Most of the time, you will be in pain and suffering.
Life is suffering. Nobody can argue against it.
In times of suffering, happiness disappear like a sandcastle. Happiness is too fleeting to protect you from the brutality of pain and suffering. When the proportion between the time you are suffering and the time you are happy is absurdly unbalanced, do you really want to be happy? Is that fragile and temporary happiness really worth the brutal battle of suffering you face in life?
Probably not.
You need something more rock-solid than happiness. Otherwise, you become resentful, bitter, and nihilistic in the face of suffering. You need something that justifies suffering, an inevitable component of being, whether that’s your responsibility for your family or your creative endeavours.
So, don’t try to escape pain and suffering with happiness. You will quickly realize how futile that is when you experience genuine suffering. Instead, face it courageously with your sense of meaning.
