Nobody cares you're happy
Posted on January 12, 2014
What is happiness anyway? An wavering chemical imbalance influenced by experiences and environment? For an insect or mouse, maybe.
If a mouse is cold, sick and unhappy, should it blame itself? It may alleviate it’s own suffering through instinct or even learned behaviour, but it will never build a shelter, study medicine or console itself.
That power seems to be exercised by humans alone, the power of a mind to reflect and influence itself and others. Unfortunately, a lot of people seem to squander this ability, taking life as it comes and accepting common sense as true.
Consider for a second the importance of your happiness to an external observer. On the whole, it would appear that your happiness is no more important than that of the mouse. What makes you more valuable?
Well, if you want to put value on happiness: it’s your ability to create happiness.
Your value, or happiness output if you will, is therefore severely limited in the case of a self absorbed individual.
This leads to my belief that one who is devoid of his own happiness but has given two others their own, has lived a more useful life than if he had simply self indulged.
One mind can only be so content but the joy it can share through thought is nearly limitless.
This is oversimplified, of course. Not taking into account hurting others, legacy after death, not to mention unintended consequences of possibly unintended actions. When you start thinking about that, you begin to doubt why this even matters.
I think Camus might be right when he said:
“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of.”.
If you possess reason, why not use it? If you can use it on yourself to your own benefit, why not to the benefit of others?