8/1

To be happy—the most common answer I’ve received to the question of what’s someone life purpose is.

Yet I find it odd that so many people want something that they don’t understand. What is their definition of “happiness”? Is it merely to maximize the amount of time spent in this capricious emotional state of bliss that comes and goes based on our impulses? Is it the achievement of something we can be proud of? Is it to attain stability and security? Friends and family? To possess freedom?

The truth is that these are the wrong questions to ask; it’s not about achieving, attaining, accomplishing, or possessing anything. These words entail an ending, a conclusion, as if the goal was to simply have something, no matter the means. Indeed, the point of a journey is not to arrive. The point of the journey is to write our story. It is not to avoid suffering. It is not to “achieve” happiness. In the grand scope of things, neither is “good” nor “bad,” as we might define them. They are both necessary components of a life worth living—a life with purpose, with meaning, with intention.

If we can look ourselves in the mirror and declare that this is not what we want—and that what we want is to merely passively drift along in this world, indulging in pleasure when our emotions decide to work in our favor, and drenching ourselves in misery when it doesn’t—then so be it. I won’t hold it against anyone. But for everyone else—this is the only way.

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