Happiness Knows No Bounds
When my math students ask me what the limit really is, I answer to them that the limit is motion. A movement that sometimes ends like a wall and sometimes it never ends. It can be a movement towards “owning something”. Does this bring happiness then?
Most parents tell their children that they have to be ants and that they have to fight the grasshopper (the story of the ant and the grasshopper). The grasshopper was, of course, the guilty party for the rest of the story. The future is unpredictable for us, and we can never know how much resources we will need if things turn on their heads.
Children are congenitally incapable of understanding the complexity of this philosophy and seeing knowledge other than as a way to pass exams, and in this way produce happiness for their parents.
This knowledge takes on a new meaning when they fall in love. Then they want to know everything. They are fascinated by the opportunity to find out everything possible. In this way, love becomes a source of knowledge. A movement that strengthens itself with the glorification that inevitably manifests itself in us at an early age.
Happiness and the “need to own”
One of the most common motivations is the “need to own”. We live in a society that is constantly flagging towards a craving for consumption. This encourages us to maintain our quality of life, or even increase it, by acquiring more and more.
Money takes advantage of this need and it attracts us. It seduces our dignity, our body, or our selfless motives. In this way, money acquires for itself an attraction that only a few of us can resist, and many of us have already sold their souls to the devil.
Money comes as a carrot. Sure, it may be that we go where others go, but people go where money leads them.
This is what has caused so many people in politics and the world of sport to abuse their power and position, just to get ahead of others. This is also the thing that made much of Nazi Germany follow the murderer’s whims. If everyone else is going in that direction, then it must definitely be the direction to happiness. And if that’s the case, then why wouldn’t we follow them?
Happiness and enjoyment
The next “engine” and at the same time a source of dissatisfaction when it comes to happiness is pleasure. The desire to seek satisfaction causes us to lower our shields. It makes us want temporary things, not permanent ones. It makes us look for short-term pleasures instead of looking for real and lasting happiness. In this way, pleasure seduces our fragility – enjoy today, as you may not see tomorrow.
But who can fight this perpetual message? Newspapers are full of unhappiness, and there are few reasons to hope. Somehow we assume we are tuned to the frequency where it hurts and happens.
Keep moving forward
In this way, we reach a point where we are not interested if we die, as long as we have satisfied our desire for pleasure. But hey, this is completely against the story and message of ants and locusts, isn’t it? Accumulate material, just for certainty. In this way, neurotism appears, an anarchist behavior that causes another person to break up into pieces. In all his efforts to move forward, he has forgotten the reason for his existence… as well as his common sense. This happens when we do not know whether we should choose responsibility or enjoyment.
We forget the common sense that gives us reasons to move forward when all things seem awkward. Reasons that have little or nothing to do with money and a lot to do with our true value and the people around us.
Let us remember this importance of common sense, and let us bear in mind Viktor Franklin’s famous works in which he describes how common sense, whether real or not, caused many people to cope with the appalling conditions of concentration camps. Without common sense, they would surely have given up.
Happiness as a virtue
A much more pleasant conception of happiness is one that has to do with virtue. This puts us firmly in the driver’s seat and makes us think about our goals. It makes us think of virtues like giving, forgiving, or loving. Activities that embrace the past, present, and future in our innermost being. Activities that guarantee a good result for our personal story, the opportunity to share in the present and give us hope in the future.
There is also a desire for information on this path. Want to get to know others, but also want to get to know ourselves. If we take this path in our lives, we will have questions, and also a few answers. Our shadow becomes our happiness. From the shadow that shows us what the difference is between the need to own and the need to be.
The search for happiness becomes a limit with no end. Happiness is a movement and there is something eternal about it, so let’s learn to walk through it in contented steps.
