It
is an emotion linked to improved health and well-being, but is our
obsession with being happy a recipe for disappointment, asks Nat
Rutherford.
...
Our culture’s fixation on happiness can seem almost religious. It is one of the only reasons for action that doesn’t stand in need of justification: happiness is good because being happy is good. But can we build our lives on that circular reasoning?
...
Yet more and more aspects of life are judged in terms of their contribution to the phantom of happiness. Does your relationship, your job, your home, your body, your diet make you happy? Okay, wait. Common mistake confusing pursuit of happiness with happiness. Three of my objections are, that the American Declaration of Independence laughably makes the p.o.h. an "unalienable RIGHT", cheek-by-jowel with Life and Liberty; "pursuit", as if we have the right to be nightstalkers or beasts; and happiness as the goal, this writer's objection. The last is, to me, the least objectionable. So it is, to me, fatal that one elide over unalienable right and pursuit.
...
There is some evidence that the obsessive pursuit of happiness is associated with a greater risk of depression.
There, Robertson gets it.
...
It’s easy to assume that happiness has always been valued as the highest good, but human values and emotions are not permanently fixed. Some values which once were paramount, such as honour or piety, have faded in importance, while emotions like "acedia" (our feeling of apathy comes closest) have disappeared completely.
...
...philosophers have tended to be sceptical of this view [self-help books to achieve happiness] of happiness because our moods are fleeting and their causes uncertain. Instead, they ask a related but wider question: what is the good life?
I LIKE THAT!
...
But maximising pleasure isn’t the only option. Every human life, even the most fortunate, is filled with pain. ...Pain is an inevitable consequence of being alive.
"I wish you enough happiness to make you forget pain. I wish you enough pain to make you appreciate happiness."
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What if pain is necessary and even desirable?
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...all the good things in life entail suffering. Writing a novel, running a marathon, or giving birth all cause suffering in pursuit of the final, joyous result.
I am too tired from study to continue tonight.
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