Happiness:A State Of Being

Happiness: A State of Being

What exactly is happiness and how can we attain it? Though it is defined as the condition of being content; the concept of happiness is still vague, like a glance of a silhouette on the verge of the night---- fleeting beauty.

Happiness is commonly thought of as having a lot of money, overflowing love, or power; in short getting everything you want and more. But can these things actually make people happy? Happiness, which is often assumed of as a fairly simple concept, is actually more than what people think of it. Although this natural emotion is desired by many, it is very obscure and therefore, for most, if not for all of us, extremely difficult to obtain. It can be mysterious and elusive, sought after by many, but not gained by all. Everybody desires to be happy. It is essential to our health and well-being. Happiness, though intangible, is one of the most important aspects in an individual’s existence.

Happiness can come from many different sources but perhaps the most prevalent ones are friends and family. Happiness emerges from the conviction that we are loved; that we are not alone. This, indeed, is true according to Karl Marx. He despises religion, for it causes us division and blinds us from reality which in the end gives us illusory happiness. For him, the only way to know the truth and to attain genuine happiness is by realizing the connectedness of being. Karl Marx gives importance on our relationship with one another and our terrestrial needs. For him, religion keeps us from knowing the truth, deafens us from our own howl , of other people, and numbs us from the thorny realities of life, yet in return it weaken us, control us--- physically, emotionally, and mentally. It shuts down our sense of reason, that we end up believing whatever there is to believe in order to give us hope, false hopes (according to Marx), which gives us false sense of victory over pain, agony, and misery---illusory happiness, as a result people would be in an illusion, made to deceive them, in order to oppress them. For Marx, true happiness is not what gives you comfort. It is what hurts you, so that you’d be in pain and get stronger, what pulls the rug off under you, so that you would be shook off and find your stable ground.

Our love for things can satisfy our need for things, and our love for people can satisfy our need for people. Though we certainly achieve happiness from both our love of things and people, how long will that happiness last? How come people never get satisfied?

Contrary to Marx’s belief, St. Augustine thinks that the only way to seek happiness is by loving and knowing God. If Karl Marx regards religion as the opium of the people, which gives illusory happiness, St. Augustine sees love of material and earthly things as fleeting happiness, destined to never last. The objects to which people extend their love, and by which they’d hope to find satisfaction simply do not contain enough of whatever it is that they need in order to be satisfied. Most people’s happiness depends on material things, transient possessions, which sure can give them a good measure of happiness. But according to him, such happiness cannot satisfy ultimately, for the finite and the temporal cannot fully meet the need for the eternal and the infinite. Nothing can make us genuinely happy, at least not in this world. St. Augustine once wrote on Confessions, “For it was my sin that not in Him, but in His creaturesвЂ"myself and othersвЂ"I sought for pleasures, sublimities, truths, and so fell head long into sorrows, confusions, errorsвЂ¦Ð²Ð‚Ñœ We will never be satisfied, for we love things and people excessively, and expect a kind of fulfillment from them beyond which their divinely determined and unique natures can provide. There is no such thing as perfect, but with God, nothing is impossible.

But come to think of it, many of us have done what Marx and St. Augustine have said, one great example is in our very own government. We have had People Power Revolutions, a combination of people’s revolution (Marx) and religion (St. Augustine), three to be exact; all had one goal, to emancipate us from oppression. But after those three revolutions, one thing has still remained; we still haven’t attained the “contentment”, which can only be brought about by attaining genuine happiness. How many revolutions do Filipinos still have to undergo before they obtain the seemingly unobtainable happiness? How many alterations still have to occur in order for us to reach stability?

We need to go back to the root of all of these --- the self. Happiness is a state of absolute peace, joy and contentment that results from having a perfectly harmonious and balanced soul. This complete absence of inner conflict and turmoil effectively renders the individual immune to all forms of suffering, regardless of their physical circumstances. According to Plato’s Republic, such a state of mind may reliably be obtained in one of two ways. Firstly, by acquiring the virtue of justice, where each part of the soul is performing its proper function under the dominion of reason. Secondly, through the practice of philosophy,