The Pursuit of Happiness

I’ve come to understand the words “happy” and “happiness” are words that are thrown around quite a bit in life. When you start a new job, people ask “Are you happy there”. When you enter into a new relationship, your close friends and family will ask you “Does S/he make you happy?” I’m sure most people have even seen the film “The Pursuit of Happyness”. The ‘pursuit of happiness’ is one of the three unalienable rights mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. If you ask 10 people what they want out of life, I’m guessing at least half of them will say “To be happy”. To go even further, if you ask them what it means to be happy they’ll probably say something along the line of “Having a successful career, a wife/husband, some children, and/or house” After all, that is what is portrayed to be happiness in terms of media/film. Happiness is something a lot of people strive to attain in their life. However, if you ask me, I will tell you the pursuit of happiness is a vain pursuit. Just hear me out…I’m not saying there’s something wrong with happiness or wanting to be happy. I just think of it in a different way.

Ever since I started to think critically about the various aspect of life in my mid/late teenage years, I was never sold on living life for the sole purpose of being happy. I always thought it was more important to be content in one’s life than it is to be happy, and the first 5 months of 2014 quickly reminded me of why I have that mindset (more on this later though). A thesaurus will tell you happiness and contentment are the same, but it’s not. I always viewed life as a circle and not a straight line, it is a cycle. As you journey through life, you will encounter many feelings and emotions on more than one occasion. Situations will differ as you journey through life but the emotions/feelings you have experienced and will come to experience are the same.
Living life for the sole purpose of being happy is a vain endeavor because it is impossible to sustain a sense of happiness. Many have tried to find a way to sustain happiness but they soon find out there’s another end of the spectrum. The seesaw called life has its ebbs & flows…peaks & valleys…to-and-fros. In your pursuit of happiness you’ll find sorrow, pain, heartache, confusion woe, misery and a host of other emotions. Eventually you’ll find happiness but the sustainment of said happiness will only last for so long. That not to say you shouldn’t continue to pursuit it though.

Another reason why living life for the sole purpose of being happy is an unavailing endeavor is because happiness is not exclusive. There are too many things that can be tied into one’s happiness. Let’s say you lose one of those things, does that one thing make you unhappy or less happy? Are there varying degrees of happiness? Allow me to use myself as an example. For the past several years I have had romantic companion (I actually dislike the word girlfriend, therefore I use many other words instead) in my life. She was/is without doubt a confidante of mine and I was her confidant. As we built upon our foundation (relationship), she eventually became tied into a part (not whole) of my happiness. Sidenote: I know some people tie their significant other to their entire happiness. If you’re one of these people, I need you to reevaluate some things. You’re potentially setting yourself up for some serious hurt down the line. Even if that person never ends up causing you hurt, it’s still important to find oneself in the journey of life, but I digress. So she eventually became tied into a part of my happiness (love has a way of doing stuff like that), then after about 4 years our companionship ended abruptly for reasons I cannot understand or for reasons that was not explained to me clearly. Well, it was abrupt for me at least, that’s all I can really say about it at the moment because this excerpt isn’t about that. Sidenote: I actually do have an excerpt regarding that whole situation called “The Vulnerability of Love” on paper. Eventually I’ll edit it and make available. Naturally I felt a myriad of emotions as a result of this: shock/denial, followed by grief, sadness, sense of abandonment, numbness, at one point I think I even felt hatred, but it didn’t last past a few hours. As I navigated and continue to navigate through this multitudinous sea of emotions, I know this is a flow to one of my life’s ebb. It’s all part of the pursuit of happiness being content in life. Should I be unhappy? Or is my happiness at a level 5 instead of a level 10?

The psalmist tells us “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Unfortunately joy doesn’t last forever, and that too may only be endured for a period of time. It is impossible to talk about happiness without some reference to sorrow/sadness. There are two sides to a coin; the yin must be accompanied by the yang. When the yin is joined with the yang, you have balance. You don’t strive solely for sadness/sorrow nor should you strive solely for happiness; instead strive for the balance between the two which is contentment. You may find that’s what you’ve been after all along.