Happiness is nowhere to be found
Last year while visiting a good friend of mine I told him that my philosophy of life was that life was shit and you couldn’t do anything about it. He realised that it was a tongue in cheek remark and laughed. However there was a hint of truth in what I had said and later on he quoted me to another friend.
So am I talking doom and gloom or does this cloud have a silver lining? Sometimes when people ask me if I’m happy I tell them that I don’t believe in happiness. Happiness is nowhere to be found.
Stimulus response
Back to my original aphorism - Life is shit and you can’t do anything about it. You can’t do anything about he fact that it’s shit but you can do something with that realisation. It’s all about your response to the stimulus. There is another saying that says that there is no such thing as bad weather but only the wrong clothes. Again it’s only our response to the given situation - a situation that is beyond our control. We cannot control the weather or any of the facts of life.
The quest for Meaning
Aside from happiness the other great quest is for meaning. When we find meaning in our lives then we will be complete or fulfilled. That great hole would be filled with something profound and make us whole. But what if life has no meaning? The very question that asks for life’s meaning presupposes such a meaning. And it is the same with happiness. There are fleeting moments of joy, contentment and pleasure. Some last longer than others but all come to their inevitable end. What I mean when I speak of happiness is the happily ever after mythology. Is there really such a place? Do I believe in it? Certainly not!
In the Absurdist philosophy of Camus we see that it is absurd that humans search for meaning where none is to be found yet they search anyway. Once we realise that both meaning and happiness don’t really exist we can give up this futile pursuit and just relax. Accept who we are, where we are and what we’ve got. That’s not to say that we don’t have a choice or that we cannot improve but that we grow up and stop praying to Santa.