Happiness

Happiness

        Happiness isn’t hard. It isn’t difficult, it isn’t unappealing, and it isn’t foreign. Happiness is something so simple that we get a taste of it even when we’re just minutes old. Happiness is found in music, in art, in dance, in education, in communication, is prayer, in thought, in challenges, and all over this world, even in the deep, dark corners and crevasses you’d least expect to find it. Everything we do is a step closer to having ultimate happiness. I thought of a staircase when reading Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics”, because each step we take is good because it’s progress and it makes us happy for different reasons. We experience different types of happy depending on our good we preform. No matter how tall or short our staircase is, how big or small our steps are, or even if we almost make it to the top only to then progress back down, to begin climbing yet again, we will eventually get to our ultimate good and ultimate happiness.

        Aristotle tells us that we shouldn’t aim at happiness or wish to live a good life, instead we should simply just ‘do’ and he tells us what a truly good life consists of. Apparently some of us have a corrupt and imperfect way of picturing happiness, which on some level I agree with but on another I disagree. As sad and shallow as it might sound, we are in a world that’s run by technology, constant improvements, and the desire for the new trends and expensive name brands. Our world today is on a whole different page than the world that Aristotle was in at the time. Although basic human needs and emotions will never change, there are many different factors that go into determining if someone is happy or not especially in consideration of the vast differences in living conditions. My point is, although Aristotle warns that happiness due to sensual pleasure and honors aren’t the best form of happiness, most people today find their happiness that way. He even states how sensual pleasures are aimed more at plants and animals because human life has higher, more complex ends. But there are people on this earth that are greedy and selfish and that is the best way to live according to them. I would say a lot of people at this time would find their happiness in their own personal pleasure, which isn’t really happiness because it isn’t good? I understand that selfishness isn’t a pure concept so it only makes sense to say it isn’t good, but some people truly feel happiness when they get a new phone or other material items. I also see what Aristotle is saying when we tells us that we human beings have the rational branch to our soul, which controls our impulses and should help us with our virtue and happiness, but sometimes we can become very good at listening to the voice in our head that says ‘do it anyways’ and ‘who cares’. Some of us easily look past our rational soul and continue living a greedy life full of money and happiness (although it may be empty happiness, it still brings these people joy) and work up their personal staircase.