Comment by cortesoft
5 hours ago
I have often felt conflicted about happiness and what we should strive for in our lives.
It is true that most people seem to think happiness is the ultimate goal for life. They say they just want to be happy, that they just want their kids to be happy. Often times, though, it seems almost circular in logic; any time you pushback against the idea of happiness or why being happy all the time isn’t always good, people will just say “oh, that isn’t REAL happiness” or “that actually is happiness!”
Often this is when I bring up hedonism and say, “well, if pure happiness is all that matters, why don’t we all just do heroin all the time? You will feel great!” Of course, they will say “well the high can’t last forever and eventually your life will suck and that is why it isn’t real happiness.
I think it is more than that, though. Imagine you could feel the best feeling you have had all the time, just sitting there. You could just lean back and feel good for as long as you want. Would you want that?
I think most people wouldn’t, and not just because we don’t think it is possible. It is more than that. We want to do hard things that make us work and that hurt a bit and frustrate us, because there is a sense of satisfaction when you persevere. We need to feel pain and sadness, to feel the fullest connection with others through the full range of emotions.
It is not easy to articulate exactly what we want, but it isn’t simply happiness.
> I have often felt conflicted about happiness and what we should strive for in our lives.
It's the striving itself that is the source of our suffering & dissatisfaction
The reason its hard to articulate what we want is we are conditioned to think of our life as a series of targets to hit, but that striving is where we suffer. Maybe you target wealth, then you look for happiness, then you look for meaning, and it doesn't end.
Life is like a fire, you don't ask the fire what its goal is.
> We want to do hard things that make us work and that hurt a bit and frustrate us, because there is a sense of satisfaction when you persevere.
Even with this, making satisfaction the goal will turn it into another struggle or commodity to be consumed. We like hard things because the intensity forces us to be present. The striving mind stops worrying about the future or the past and you are fully present with the task at hand.
Once you can get out of the way of yourself, you realize we don't actually want a better experience, we just want to stop being distracted from the one we're already having.
> It's the striving itself that is the source of our suffering & dissatisfaction
thewebguyd out here laying down some Noble Truths!
Happiness doesn't have to be the only goal to be worthwhile. Of course people don't want to live in fake bliss. Happiness is a vague term for many specific emotions; the sense of satisfaction from overcoming a difficult challenge is a form of happiness, or contributes to happiness.