On happiness

The most obvious things are also the hardest to pin down. Happiness remains as obfuscated as an idea can be. Happiness is often misidentified as being synonymous with being comfortable, content, and even-keeled. Nothing could be further from the truth. Happiness—true happiness that resembles a kind of heavenly bliss—is a fleeting state that we come in and out of. It is not, and cannot, be a state of being or an attitude. The absence of discomfort, pain, and tension does not indicate the presence of happiness. Happiness is the result of working for or towards a specific goal. It is an unintentional byproduct of being engaged in an activity. Pouring endless hours into an art project, practicing nonstop for an athletic event, reaching deep to untapped potentials of energy—these are activities that result in a person being happy.

On the flip side of this, to be happy in the highest, most fulfilling sense of the idea, one has to risk misery. Being happy requires courage. Happiness is the result of tension, stress, and activity. Sometimes we pour more energy and emotion into something than we can hardly bare, only to have it backfire on us—broken loves, lost athletic contests, fumbled aesthetic endeavors, etc. Because ecstatic happiness brings with it the risk of ultimate misery, people avoid it altogether. Quick fixes, television, junk food, and the internet have come to redefine happiness for the modern world. Happiness is confused with that which comes easy and with “the absence of pain.” The television zombie will never experience the happiness that an artist does; the couch potato will never experience the happiness that an athlete does; the wealthy and privileged whom have had everything handed to them, will never experience the happiness that a hard-worker does.

The highest forms of happiness resemble experiences of a transcendent nature. We completely and utterly lose ourselves within them. It is ecstasy in the fullest sense of the word. The self is so engaged by the activity that for that instant you are the activity no matter what it is: you are the canvas, you are the melodies, you are the sport, you are the pure and engaged energy.

This is why the leisurely are the ones with existential ailments. A person whose life is completely devoid of pain, discomfort, and struggle, is also devoid of meaning, purpose, and true happiness. Philosophy may be an activity reserved for the leisurely but happiness is an experience reserved for the disadvantaged.