Who Ever Said Happiness is What We Should Strive For?

In recent weeks it has solemnly come to my attention that many people are dedicating their lives to "being happy." Why, you may ask? That, my friends, is what I am dedicated to finding out.

For too long, people have just "survived." They look at their lives as a very long and disturbing inconvenience. When thinking on the meaning of life they decide that, because they're so unhappy, the purpose of their existence must be simply to find a way to be happy, and then once this "way" has been found, proceed to be happy, and that's it. This method of thought has many flaws. It certainly creates a sense of "good enough is good enough for me" among the masses. The resulting aspiration of mediocrity surely becomes the most important and final aspiration in life.

To ensure that a misunderstanding does not occur at this point, I would like to point out that happiness is not a negative thing in and of itself. It is the ideal that happiness is the ultimate goal that is dangerous. Doesn't it seem logical that other things in life would be more inspiring, more educating, more emancipating, than happiness? When we view happiness in its proper roll we come to realize that it is simply a pleasant by-product of a personal progression towards one's valid ultimate goal.

So what is a valid ultimate goal? To give the example from my own life, learning is one answer. I have observed, through many experiences that brought me sadness, and many that brought me happiness, and many that made me neither happy nor sad, that satisfaction comes from experience. Experience is learning. Life, after all, is just one giant string of experiences. When we gain knowledge from each of these, progress, and move forward with our lives, we find ultimate satisfaction. Sometimes, it is the happy experiences that help us gain the most knowledge, sometimes it's the most difficult and extreme. Making a significant impact on society or raising a family would also be examples of a valid ultimate goal. Doesn't it seem logical that simply obtaining happiness, without satisfaction, would not be... well... satisfying? Let it be satisfaction we strive for, and happiness will follow.

Let's examine what exactly leads people to believe that happiness is what we should strive for. Some of the main factors are things that take place in many peoples day-to-day lives: Religion, welfare and class structure to name a few. These are things that have been completely integrated into the social system for thousands of years; they have been ingrained deeply into the minds of the people. Because of these systems, and the attitudes they propagate, people are either afraid or unable to take control of their own lives. When the church says "fear God!" and the welfare system says "you could never do it on your own" and the wealthy say to the poor, "you could never get to where I am" people believe them. It becomes a form of slave mentality. People don't believe that they'll ever obtain satisfaction from life, so they settle. As if trying to scramble an egg without breaking the shell, they fail.

All of this may sound troubling to you. You may ask: "What can we do?" Well, the only place to start is education. It doesn't even matter what we teach, or what people want to learn. The simple process of learning, gaining knowledge, will teach us all how to become the people that we want to be. It will show us how to recognize our potential, how to set our ultimate goal, ultimately achieve it, and move beyond it. By doing this, we will surely find our happiness, only now, we'll see this happiness simply as a pleasant by-product of striving for, and reaching our ultimate goal in life.