If we must ask questions, let us ask the right ones

Sometimes, when an answer cannot be found to a question, it is not the answerer's fault but the questioner's. How a question is framed is often the cause of an inability to find an answer. Is that perhaps why "What is the purpose of life," or "What is our purpose in life," and so forth, engender so many varied and often passionate answers, but ultimately none which satisfy?

One answer is that our only real duty, our only real striving point, is to achieve happiness. Still this is not clear. Do we mean a total of happiness over the span of our lives? Do we mean to be happy in every moment? Or do we mean that only the last moment - the moment before death - needs to be filled with happiness, since happiness exists in the present and erases all that comes before?

It is often remarked that geniuses and other people who benefit the race as a whole, or are pioneers of some great change in the world, are seldom happy. Hegel speaks of this in the Philosophy of History, and essentially says that their sacrifice is one that must be made, for their action transcends their limited particularity. How is that consolation for them? They may have their own motivation, their own reason for which such a life is the only possible pursuit, but ultimately I do not think it is selfish (or rather, it is selfish but it is not amoral, not even incorrect) to prize your own life and your happiness over the advances of the world. For ultimately no one can bring you happiness or invest thought in your life but yourself. The external paths which connect our actions to others, the translation of our effort into physical quantity, be it energy, empathy, the way in which our efforts move into the world and then are re-translated into another's life, into change - these are so unpredictable since so complex, without any guarantee that what you have done will make any difference in the ultimate balance. You may see the fruits of your labour directly, and be glad; and think to yourself that you have made a difference - but what difference is this? Are you certain that, ten years from now, fifty years, your difference will have been a positive change in a person's life? Sometimes it may seem, indeed, to be so. But these ways are often unpredictable, and even a person whom you never thought you had influenced, whom you didn't try to help, will consider you to be one of the prime factors in her life. I am not saying that we should give up hope altogether, shut ourselves off from people because no change can be made, because it is clear that change can be made. But we cannot expect that the actions of others will lift us up when we need it, because the ways in which we are touched and inspired are impossible to predict. Thus we must, in the final equation, fend for ourselves.

I believe it a sacred, crucial duty for each person to find their way to a personal, deep, and fulfilled happiness. Yet what does this mean? What is happiness, and how is it measured? One of the great poisons of the so-called developed world is the idea that as human beings our best state is when we are happy all the time. We have an obligation to find spiritual peace, to find physical satisfaction, to take ourselves seriously and afford ourselves any pleasure we may seek, and any moment that is painful or causes us to suffer is a waste, an unnecessity, and is to be rejected as soon as possible. The most insidious agent of this poison may be magazines, which are expert in creating problems where none existed, and then offering solutions to those very same problems - solutions that you, a second ago, did not need. I have actually seen a blurb that read: "Think you're happy? Take this test and find out" on the cover of a magazine. What this manages to do is to remove the reader from the state of unconscious happiness she is already in - for a state of true happiness is perhaps unnoticed, or even unremarkable (but more on this later) - and to then supply their own criteria for happiness. But this is not enough. For it has created suspicion in the reader, an uncertainly and an unwillingness to trust herself in judging those paramaters which she and she alone is qualified to judge. No woman felt her pores to be large until she reads that there are 10 ways she can minimize her pores. There is no problem - and thus no customer - until a problem is created and a solution offered. The worst part, though, is in their unspoken opinion that our goal in life should be to iron out all our small difficulties, because they, being negative, have nothing to offer us.

This lie, that human beings must be pleasured and satisfied at all times, extends beyond the blatant medium of media and into subtler realms, where the naive may feel that they are buying into something deeper than they are capable of. Yoga, for instance, is described as spiritual by its practitioners, and is in fact spoken of in a way that is difficult to understand by the unwashed. This generally means that the converted believe that they hold a secret, and that because of this secret there is a kind of barrier separating them from the unwashed population, those who must be converted to join in the admiration of the secret. The truth is that true spirituality, religious or no, is a difficult and painful process. It may be that many people can discover their true spirituality through yoga, but for most it is a convenient and comfortable way to reap the titular rewards of something that is normally awkward and socially excluded (i.e. organized religion). Thus a young person can sign up for a yoga class and feel that she is doing something good for her soul, that she is finally treating herself well and that she deserves such good treatment, and this reinforcement of the absolute positive will continue to stand in the way of her path towards understanding and wisdom.

At a high enough level, all thought begins to look alike, and all great people share the same thoughts, to paraphrase Emerson. And all great thought seems to point out that in life and in everything there must be balance. There cannot be great without small, there cannot be happiness without pain.