On happiness and death
Balloons suspended in the air
Some words can only be defined by a person, not the public. This includes especially the word “happy” and its various synonyms.
A lot of us choose our own level of happiness without our knowledge. We like to think that if a person has food, shelter, and physical health, then they’re happy. And if we have those things, too, we feel happy.
This is usually a great thing. Until we start to imagine how life was like in the past, or question human progress in the world we live in.
Consider this: one of the ways we justify human progress is by saying that science and technology have increased our quality of life, and hence, our happiness. As humans, we like to think that we’ve gotten happier over the course of the past century.
But for some of us, this assertion contradicts the earlier definition of happiness. If humans have always had food, shelter, and physical health, which is true, doesn’t that mean that human happiness too hasn’t changed? Isn’t it so that humanity hasn’t actually made any real progress?
This realization develops a conflict that is hard to digest. At least it has for me as I continue to experience an existential crisis bordering on anxiety and depression. One question I’ve asked myself often is: what is the point of labour if not to foster meaningful progress? Isn’t it rather depressing that we haven’t actually gotten anywhere and have chosen to delude ourselves of having made progress?
When I reached this point in my life, it was motivating to realize that no one can define emotional words for me, including the word happy. No meaning is clear-cut in the dictionary, and whether there’s an absence of happiness in life isn’t up to anyone to judge with any degree of certainty. This also includes the perceived lack of shelter, food, or physical health for a person.
The latter two things in the list can be hard to accept. But we must also remember that being fed from an oppressive force can instead breed sickness and loathing in the stomach, and that the Egyptians believed that the most significant thing a person could do was die.
The message here is simple: to be happy, we must have a definition of the word happiness that embraces suffering openly as a worthy experience. If we narrowly look at suffering as only a terrible thing, that is when we struggle to find joy in life.
Any spiritual leader will preach that a life full of meaning and purpose can only be earned from living a life free of the ego or the blinding need to attach to hidden subconscious desires.
However, a person who is unhappy in their life will ask: How can a person live a meaningful life if everyone around is suffering?
But there’s an even more important question to ask here:
What if there’s a nobler reason to experience death and suffering beyond the mere experience of death and suffering?
We have no excuse: we must stay open-minded and seek to define our world in ways that maximize our own happiness.
