When you ask people what they want most in life often they will answer, “To be happy…” However, if you’ve heard about the corruptible nature of happiness you wonder: this pursuit of happiness, is it a worthwhile endeavor?
Well. It depends how you pursue it. Make it the goal of your life and it will ever elude you. Why? Such is the nature of happiness.
Slavoj Zizek stated that happiness should be “treated as a byproduct, and a necessary one”, of whatever pursuit in life. If you focus on it you’re lost. One the other hand, if you work on a goal, towards a dream, and it brings you satisfaction, both the process and the anticipation of the outcome, in there lies the holy grail of happiness.
For example think of it as the shadow of an object. First the object must be there, call it objective or goal. And than light must act upon the object. Call it the action. Casting the right light on the right object will give you a distinct, refreshing shadow. Call it the state of happiness.
Happiness is a necessary byproduct of a life’s pursuit.
On the other hand, others believe happiness is a choice. And there is a great deal of truth in this as well. No pursuit is straightforward and any aspect of life, whether career, relationships, health, etc. will have its ups and downs. Yet how you choose to view it will matter. What you choose to zoom on and dwell on will constitute the choice to be happy.
The thing to bear in mind is happiness will never come solely from one successful aspect of life. We are complex human beings. Our lives have many facets. Some are core major facets. Failure to set and accomplish goals successfully in any of them will affect the rest. In fact that is what often leads to imbalances in people, psychologically and existentially. This in turn will often keep one trapped in depressive states, making them loose hope.
In addition, happiness is linked to the capacity to see beyond the current circumstances. In other words, hope plays a key part. Erik Erikson put it this way: “hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired.”
Are you happy? As an exercise, make a list of all the important areas of your life and grade your level of success in each of them on a scale from 0 to 10. How do you think that impacts your state of happiness? Choose one aspect that needs working on and think of three things you could do even today to improve it’s grading.
Most importantly, start now.
