That Ever Elusive Happiness

"Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know," said Ernest Hemingway. It is interesting that Hemingway would observe thus; but come to think of it, for a large part of the intelligent population this is true. The question is why? For it is not like they choose to be unhappy. Why is happiness that ever elusive component of an intelligent thinking human life?

Kant proposed the following rules for happiness, "something to do, someone to love, something to hope for." By that definition, most intelligent thinking humans have something to do and someone to love; albeit these might be in brief spurts of their life span. The problem then probably lies with something to hope for.

Living in the postmodern existential world that we do, our deepest sense of longing seems to be eternally hoping that something worth hoping for comes along. For as it has long been said, to hope is to be human. Yet the unspoken concept imbibed in all our minds seems to be as Aristotle declared, "Hope is a waking dream." It would seem that being stuck in the midst of this deep chasm, between the deep seated need of our human self to find hope to live and the bellowing want of our minds to strip ourselves of an unseen reality; more often than not as a sublimation to keep ourselves from bring ravaged by the reality of non-events in the form of failed hopes - we seem to be naturally inclining ourselves towards the void and bitter pessimism of having nothing that holds any meaning in our lives. We seek to alleviate our suffering by choosing death over life. We choose to live with the notion that Nietzsche proposed "Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man." 

Yet, by doing so we rob ourselves of our own happiness and in turn try to fill such void in our lives with everything other than hope; only to perpetuate the cycle to infinity. For all the while, we do not realize that without hope or the need for it, our lives as humans can never be truly lived. Our failed hopes are but a blip on the screen of the grand scale of our lives and in trying to shield ourselves from the ever possible danger of another failed hope, we degrade our own lives to merely an existence. Jürgen Moltmann would write about the same, "Totally without hope one cannot live. To live without hope is to cease to live. Hell is hopelessness. It is no accident that above the entrance to Dante's hell is the inscription: "Leave behind all hope, you who enter here." "- Theology of Hope.

But what does one hope for and how? In the world full of hatred, despair, pain and hurting, where do we turn to draw our courage; courage for our heart to hope and our mind to dream? Living as we do, forlorn as we are in the absence of true happiness and joy from our lives; our need to find hope was never greater. 

Cicero noted that While there's life, there's hope. Carl Sandberg would go on to say, "A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on." Our hope lies in life itself. Ellen Hopkins could not have captured it better when she wrote, "in a woman's womb. another chance. to make the world better." There is hope as long as we live. The reason for our hope is life itself. "As long as there's life, there's hope" - Tamora Pierce.

Regarding the how we could find hope J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, "Oft hope is born when all is forlorn," in The Return of the King. When we see pain, destruction, suffering our emotion to it is quite naturally forlorn, but our reaction to it ever ought to be hopeful. Michael Jackson is known to have said, "In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe." For as Chesterton observed, "Hope is the power of being cheerful in circumstances that we know to be desperate." After all, "Hope is a verb with its shirtsleeves rolled up." like David Orr said. We find hope in our ability to change - ourselves and the world around us.

Regarding the where we find hope, "We carry within us the wonders we seek without us” observed Thomas Browne. For many of us a logical conclusion leading from how we find hope becomes being hopeful of finding hope within us. Sadly, i propose we couldn't be more wrong. For when a creature so desperately longing for the need for hope to live tries to find hope within itself; it voids itself of its own store of hope, thus pummeling itself into another bout of hopelessness - when the hope within has been spent on the world without. This then brings us back eventually to the same existential state of life, as we try in perpetuity to refill our store of hope from ourselves. No. The answer to where we find our hope is not within. We find joy within. We find peace within. But we cannot find hope within alone. Finite that we are, we are ever in need of refilling our portion of hope from without.

So where then do we find our refilling of hope? I propose we find it in love. When we have someone to love who loves us back, our portion of hope is always full. We let go of our existential pessimism, being pumped up with the hope of happiness we have before us. We are driven to do and be our best for our hope drawn from the love we share with this person, drives and feeds us. For some, this is even true of the love they share with their pets. For some like me, it also stems from the metaphysical love i share with God. But regardless of the person or being, a shared love fuels our hearts to hope and gives our minds the courage to dream. And in that sweet spot we find happiness.

For as humans, we are driven by 3 forces - an appetite, the need for security and the need to belong or feel loved. Where something to do fulfills our appetites, someone to love provides us with a sense of security; the love we share gives us something to hope for, long for and dream about. It is then that we find ourselves truly happy; in the perfect collusion and fulfillment of all the fundamental forces that drive our being as humans.

I therefore posit that the ever elusive happiness we find ourselves yearning for in our lives as intelligent thinking humans can only be found from finding our hope in the love we share, with the someone / life / being we love. It gives us a hope for our future and a happiness as its present. That ever elusive happiness if very much within our grasp; should we only find our hope in the love we share.

You, the Philosopher

Philosophy - for me is a big word with a small meaning. At the risk of oversimplifying it and using the word loosely, Philosophy for me essentially means belief in an explanation of something; our underlying belief in the explanation of an idea, thought, pattern or system that at its most innate level helps qualify our everyday lives and rationalizes our behavior, attitude, lifestyle and culture. This explanation could have been taught (by culture, people), experienced (by circumstances) or even rationalized by oneself (to find meaning and purpose to an event); but in the end it is what characterizes everything we hold on dearly to and why we choose to be the way we are. Whether or not these beliefs have rational and / or logical flaws in them is immaterial; as long as they make sense to the person who holds them. Sometimes the explanation might be as limited as 'This is just who i am;' yet the fact that it is explanation enough for the person, goes to support the fact that it is the underlying philosophy for that specific event, circumstance, behavior, attitude or being. Where all philosophy starts with a question - how, why, where, when, what; our being human starts with trying to make sense of the world we are in. We often do so by asking questions and sometimes by just accepting answers without thinking through them.

Therefore, believe it or not, every human (you inclusive) is a mini philosopher; most times even without trying to be. As we all hold onto an explanation of why we choose to be the way we are, or what we do; we all have and continuously develop our own unique philosophy of life and our being. Philosophy is a way of life (even when practised informally in everyday life) and is deeply connected to our being human. Charles Schultz is known to have said, "I think I've discovered the secret of life - you just hang around until you get used to it." While hanging around thus, we develop our own unique formula or philosophy of life.

But all to what end? "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how," said Neitzsche. Could it be that our deepest sense of longing and all our philosophy of life and being works towards leading us to our purpose in life? Gautama Buddha is known to have said, "Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it." Robert Bryne said that The purpose of life is a life of purpose. If we look at our everyday lives (at least if i look at mine), i find this pursuit to be true. Everything i do and every philosophy i live seems to be guided by finding, loving and living out my purpose in life.

But how do we find our purpose - if we do have one? Carl Sagan said, "We make our purpose." "Free yourself from the complexities and drama of your life. Simplify. Look within. Within ourselves we all have the gifts and talents we need to fulfill the purpose we've been blessed with," said Steve Maraboli in Life, the Truth, and Being Free. However where most people's answer to where and how they find their purpose starts and stops by looking at / within themselves, i personally believe that the whole question of purpose is a moot point without the existence of God. 

Therefore as Rick Warren wrote in The Purpose Driven Life, "Without God, life has no purpose, and without purpose, life has no meaning. Without meaning, life has no significance or hope;" i believe that we need to understand God and our purpose from the perspective of a created being, else we would write off the very need for a purpose. William Lane Craig said, "If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose."

When all of us being human seem to be driven by the need to find our purpose and how we spend our lives, especially with it being the question we seem to pose to ourselves from our deepest beings; we ought to be able to find an answer to it. "The question of how to spend my life, of what my life is for, is a question posed only to me, and I can no more delegate the responsibility for answering it than I can delegate the task of dying," said Anthony Kronman in Education's End. I find my purpose in life in being a Christian; as such my philosophy of life stems from understanding and living the purpose for which i was created.

Where do you find your purpose and what is your philosophy of life?

Where do you belong?

"Home is a notion that only nations of the homeless fully appreciate and only the uprooted comprehend."

- Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

"Where are you from?" is a question i used to cringe at while growing up. For i never knew what answer to give. So, i remember as a child giving different answers to that question every time somebody asked me.

As i grew into my teens, i tried to grapple with the concept of my identity. It was then that i figured, since i didn't really belong anywhere i had the freedom to explore and choose. And explore and choose i did; today i am a practising Christian.

But by the time i was an adult i realized, just because you choose to feel comfortable with something, someone or somewhere doesn't actually mean you belong there. There lay the problem; for a larger multitude of the something, someone or somewhere still reject you being part of them. You are back to square one.

Today, halfway through my life i still grapple with the fact that i belong nowhere:

• I have no homeland, yet i feel most at home in the North East of India; Nagaland in particular. "Language is the only homeland," said Czesław Miłosz. Well in my case i have no language too. But like John le Carré said in The Honourable Schoolboy "Home's where you go when you run out of homes." I find myself running to the North East (or at least wanting to) when in need of solace, peace or just some quiet time of my own. Yet most there would stare at me because i neither look, nor act, nor dress, nor talk like them. But i do love their food.
• But can food truly act as a common denominating factor? "There is no love sincerer than the love of food." proposed George Bernard Shaw in Man and Superman. On my travels i have seen a sense of bonding over food; often permeating the tough fabric of ego and parochial walls that are built up by humanity in an attempt to undo the sense of being dominated over by the others. After all, "we all eat & it would be a sad waste of opportunity to eat badly," like Anna Thomas is known to have said.
• But if food habits alone can give a sense of belonging, the whole world should feel Indian. After all, we did give the world spices. So much so that when William Cowper penned down, "Variety's the spice of life..." the greater world was in process of being awakened to what they had been missing out on. Going by that rationale alone, the world should feel a belonging to India. But that is not so. So, what makes one belong?

William Glasser suggested that "we are driven by five genetic needs: survival, love and belonging, power, freedom, and fun". It is interesting that he would club love and belonging. Is it possible that feeling loved is the most innate and underlying emotion to feeling a sense of belonging?

If so, my own life experience make sense. For i feel a deep sense of belonging to Nagaland and the North East of India because i have always felt most loved and accepted there. David Gemmell would say in Legend, "Live or die, a man and a woman need love. There is a need in the race. We need to share. To belong." 

Where do you belong? And why? What do you think?