The most important personal goal in my life, and very much possibly in every human’s life, is to achieve happiness, because the one who enjoys happiness, not only has less interest to harm oneself and the others, but also helps. My most important social goal is to help the others achieving happiness, if they wish so.
Many claim that the most important goal of their lives is to gain, or maintain, a good family and work and education, wealth, health, their religion or political ideology, etc. However, if we approach them carefully, we notice that these are all means to achieve something more important and more valuable. As a proof, we notice that when they do not gain the main goal, they divorce, leave their education or change their major, resign or change their jobs, leave their wealth, change their religion or become a secular person, change their political party etc.
Since happiness is a feeling and a choice, I would prefer to select the term choosing happiness, rather than achieving it. Let us see what I mean by happiness, before we continue investigating this topic with the possibility of misunderstanding the terms I use. In this paper by happiness, I mean choosing the continuation of the relative feelings of satisfaction, calmness, and joy. The word “continuation” plays an important role in the definition, since short-lasting pleasures in life are quite common, but not enough. Indeed, physical and emotional pains can minimize those choices. While choosing the satisfaction and joy are more limited, and sometimes even wrong, calmness is easier and wiser to achieve most of the time. Additionally, while we may be unsatisfied with a particular talk, action, incident, or condition, we could choose to hold a general satisfaction towards the totality of our lives.
While compared to Buddha whose point of start was something negative (human suffering or dissatisfaction), mine is something positive (happiness). At one point, our investigations have focused on one fundamental issue, the disability of human to find happiness. Buddha locates the reason in human desire. I focus on another aspect, the illusion of human about how to achieve happiness. The major mistake the majority of people make is that although they try to gain something that is continues, they depend it on short-lasting reasons such as good education and job and family and home etc. Thus, in order to stop the illusion, one needs to depend the happiness on a more durable reason such as an idea!
My suggestion is that, instead of depending our happiness on our possessions, or what we miss in our lives, we choose it directly because of its own value, since it is the most important goal in life. I am aware that this logic may seem odd to many, and too simple to be true, while difficult to put into practice. One tool to make that easier is to increase our awareness about ourselves and about the world around us!
We do not need to limit our lives by choosing extreme decisions. Thus, for gaining extra happiness, we could gain more or better things, but without them, we do not suffer. In that manner, we always enjoy a minimum of happiness without a need to be healthy (emotionally or physically), live in another place, time, condition, or having the company of particular people.
NOTICE: Please do not hesitate to respond to my ideas. I look forward to constructive criticism!
