Happiness.
It’s funny how everything we believe, perceive, or feel in life is based on our own fallible brains—or more specifically, our minds. Think about emotions like happiness and sadness. The triggers don’t matter as much as the way we process them.
Take the Stoics, for instance. They believed in accepting everything without judgment, seeing everything as inevitable. But maybe they were just trying to avoid pain by not letting themselves feel it too deeply.
The Buddhists, on the other hand, say life is suffering and that our purpose is to ease that suffering for others. It makes it sound like our baseline is unhappiness, not neutrality. So if they’re right, we start at a disadvantage. Strangely, though, the Buddhists I’ve met always seem happy. I wonder if starting from a place of suffering means that any positive shift feels more significant.
The Christians, well, their beliefs on happiness are pretty widely known, so I’ll skip that.
But I keep coming back to the question: is our objective to be happy? Most people would deny it, saying they’re working toward something more noble. But if I’m being honest, I suspect most of us are chasing happiness or trying to fulfill some need. And if that’s true, can we choose to be happy no matter what? If we can’t, does that mean it’s because of our own faulty minds?
Maybe the answer is purely medical. Maybe we’re just missing some key ingredient for happiness. That would explain why we’ve been trying for years to chemically manufacture it—antidepressants to give us a boost, to nudge the brain into something resembling contentment. But Prozac isn’t permanent. Now, the trend seems to be finding legal ways to numb the mind, to pump up serotonin and dopamine. I wonder, is that just a mindless high? And if it is, does that make it wrong?
So if those don't work, there's always the next new thing: tranquilizers like ketamine. I think they just make you forget you’re sad, honestly. And maybe that’s part of the answer, to simply numb the mind rather than try to “fix” it. Millions of people seem to find some solace there, so who am I to dismiss it?
I’ll admit I’ve chased happiness, too. I think now I'm chasing answers. Which of course would make me happy.
It makes me wonder if our minds have evolved out of sync with the senses. Maybe we’ve reached a point where thoughts, instead of instincts, are the ones leading us—and they’re not exactly reliable guides for happiness.
I’d like to think that I’d eventually stumble on some answer here, but I’m realizing that my mind is just evolving further out of the reach of any “solution” to happiness. But you know what? All these thoughts, all these questions—they make me happy. Somehow, knowing that the answers elude me feels comforting. And maybe that’s enough.