Where does happiness come from? I desire to be happy and find myself trying to attain happiness. I feel like being happy is a part of living. No one wants to live an unhappy life, but how do we become happy ? Everyone has their own ideas of happiness according to their lives but could everyone's answer to happiness be the same? According to the existentialist point of view "happiness, then, is to get ones value from within oneself." Could our happiness really come from within and not from the external world? I think what it's saying is in order to be happy we first have to be happy with ourselves. Happiness comes from within. We have the power to determine our happiness.
So all this time if the key to being happy comes from within, have I really been looking in the wrong places (in people, material possessions...etc)? when all this time my happiness was always in my control. My happiness lies within me - "one must lose all hope of external value before seeking value within." So in order to attain my happiness from within I must separate myself in a sense from the external world. I have to forget about finding happiness in other people and all the material possessions which bring me joy, to trade it all in for "true happiness" which comes from me. If this existentialist point of view is true, then, the outside world technically doesn't matter because it doesn't contain the answer to my happiness. I agree and somewhat disagree with this point of view because I find that even though being happy with yourself and finding "value" in yourself is important , it's not wrong to find happiness or get happiness from other people. I feel like our external world plays some role in our ultimate happiness.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
In your post I like how you broke down the existentialist point of view of happiness beause it gave me an idea of what you might be comparing it with. your on life.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that happiness is very important to find it in ourselves, but finding happiness from the external world shouldn't be a problem at all. If we could not find happiness from the outside world, then our daily lives that we commit too would be horrible, enjoying the big or little things would be a waste of time.
I look foward to reading more of your blogs on happiness and freedom and your thoughts on it.