Happiness is not the goal

By Kumar Vikrant

Everyone wants to be happy; we all know and understand that. There is even a movie starring Will Smith that celebrates the pursuit of happiness in its title. Our global culture is experiencing a phenomenon wherein all the self-help books claim happiness as the ultimate destination. Nevertheless, if you genuinely think that happiness is the goal, attaining it will always be that, a pursuit that never ends.

I'm not saying that happiness in itself is non-desirable. One should always welcome it with open arms and be grateful. However, if you solely pursue happiness, you are bound to be trapped in a never-ending cycle since the “happy” state is an in-the-moment thing. Alas, as our lives go on, you and I both know that it is marred with suffering, grief, uncomfortable situations and pain.

The only logical question that now arises is what should be a worthwhile objective in our lives? Critical philosophy and thinking offer responsibility as a potential alternative to the single-minded chase for high happiness. To properly bring forth the responsibility in our lives, we ought to behave in a reliable, noble, and honest manner. What is the highest good? Well, it should be the proper manifestation of your being to optimize your role on a broader scale. What would happen to you and the people around you if everyone consciously lived per nature and tried their best to do the right things?

The pleasure, i.e., positive emotion, in our lives often comes in situations such as quenching our thirst or completing a particularly challenging task. However, such a pleasure lasts momentarily, and we are back at square one. In other words, we will feel thirsty again in a few minutes. We graduate to come out at the bottom of a new social hierarchy (e.g., the job structure at a company). The sole reliance of our state of being on the pleasure derived from such short-lived attainment is unsustainable over the long course of life.

So what could be a worthwhile endeavor to bring about a reliable and durable source of positive emotion? True liberation and freedom can only be derived from pursuing a meaningful and precious objective. Aim at the targeted goal (short or long-term), engineer a plan, implement it with dedication, and see it working. That is the source of sustainable positive emotions. Now imagine the people who continuously adopt the above-described mode of being as their baseline to repeat for all aspects of their social and psychological lives. Wouldn't such people become ubermensch (the Nietzschean term for superhuman), the epitome of the human spirit over time?

One may ask, what happens in the absence of such a meaningful goal in life? Well, then you pursue a short-term selfish and pleasurable dream. You may fool yourself into thinking that the concerned shallow goal is in your best interests and that of the society at large. However, let me tell you that your inner daemon (the wise and ancient being) will tug at you to make the overall experience non-satisfactory. As you only pursued a shallow endeavor, the soul will not be nourished, i.e., no sustained positive emotions.

Know that we cannot hide from the repetitive scenarios of life. The price of our consciousness is the non-attainment of sustained happiness in the absence of meaningful responsibilities and the realization of our true selves. So, instead of being impetuous and only seeking short-term pleasures, be, per nature, as the Stoics taught, search for meaning and layout sustainable long-term strategies in line with our responsibilities to tackle both the order and chaos that life brings to your door.

Kumar Vikrant (kvikrant071@gmail.com

) is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Hanyang University in Seoul.