Lit eZine Vol 8 | p-21 | INSIGHTS | On the Pursuit of Happiness

ARTICLE

ON THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS
by Zoe Martin

I try really hard to ignore the suitcase sitting under my dorm bed. It seems to be calling out for me. What’s another weekend at home? I’m sure my roommates won’t mind too much. I can already hear my mother’s voice on the phone. 

“You’re coming home again? Weren’t you just here?” 

She’s right. But I long to be in my own space, and maybe I do get homesick. Until I remember how it feels to be at home. Fighting. All the time. Am I willing to accept that to escape being at school? This thought cycle happens every weekend. I am not happy here, not happy there, just stuck. It’s nobody’s fault other than my own. Every time I complain about not being happy at college, my parents ask why I haven’t transferred. I tell them the same thing every time. I don’t think I’d be happy anywhere; it’s not Boston’s fault.  

I’ve taken a lot of philosophy classes in college. I’ve heard a lot of different theories about how to achieve happiness. Some reveal to me how depressed I am. Take Aristippus, for example. He was an ancient Greek philosopher who was a student of Socrates. He says that happiness is based on simple pleasures. It can be measured by how much time you spend experiencing pleasure while you’re alive. By these standards, I’m not sure if I qualify as a happy person, as I spend a lot of time existing in an uncomfortable state. Other theories validate me. 

Aristotle’s idea of happiness is called Eudaimonia. He believes it is the prime goal of life. This happiness doesn’t come from simply having pleasurable experiences or material goods. Eudaimonia comes from living virtuously and fulfilling your potential as a human. Aristotle liked to stress the difference between humans and animals. A pig can feel the same sense of “happiness” that we do when it eats or sunbathes, but unlike humans, pigs have no reasoning. Pigs cannot nurture their talents and act according to reason rather than desire. Should we value our happiness based on whether pigs can experience it also? I think probably not. I, too, love to eat and sunbathe. But I don’t think I’m more pig-like than the average person. Then I come home, from whatever party I’m at, or after buying a bunch of stuff, or vacation, or another place where I’m supposed to be happy, and I feel empty. And then I start to think about how Aristotle was right to suggest these simple pleasures only take you so far.

My life on paper is pretty great. I’m young, in school and like what I’m studying. I like how I look. I’m in a healthy relationship and have a group of friends that I would call my best friends. Sure, I have things I can complain about, and I do, but I’m not living in squalor. Yet I still feel this deep sense of sadness that I can’t shake. Last week, my friends and I went to one of my favorite restaurants, and I ordered my regular dish. We talked about what we always do. I thought I was safe. This was something I had done before, happily. It gave me joy so I could forget about everything else that was bothering me for a short while. But then I found myself sitting there, dissociating, watching myself from outside of my body, and I didn’t look happy. Aristotle still proves himself right more often than I’d like to admit. I cannot source all my happiness from external factors. 

This happens to me frequently. I’ll do something I think will bring me pleasure and instead it makes me feel more out of place because I didn’t enjoy it. Epicurus, another Greek philosopher, states that happiness is a life of pleasure. Pleasure is the only thing that has intrinsic value. Hedonist philosophy seems very appealing until you start to feel that odd third emotion. The feeling when you’re not having a bad time but still not having a great one. It’s like you’re almost there, in that happy state where you can forget about the bad, but it’s not quite blissful. Epicurus would say that there is no in-between. Pleasure is just the avoidance of pain. When you look at it that way, I guess my life is more pleasurable than I thought, since I spend a lot of time in the in-between space. If this is true, then I guess I am not a hedonist, considering I am still unhappy with my pleasure-filled life.

I’d like to think there’s some magical equation one can follow to achieve happiness in this life, but if that were the case, I wouldn’t be here wondering. Someone would have found it. I’ve tried to be that someone. I’ve looked for it and researched, hoping I could find the secret to it that philosophers have been debating for centuries. 

Freshman year, one of my philosophy classes required an assignment where I had to write what I think the good life is. Somewhere in my naïve sentences, I mentioned “doing what makes you happy”. 

My professor responded, “Can a depressed person not live the good life?”.

Three years have passed, and I still don’t know. I still feel validated by Aristotle. External things fail to bring me genuine happiness; the emptiness remains once the initial excitement fades. I’ve accepted that I am not happy all the time, in fact, most of the time. This thought scared me for a long time because I thought this meant I could not live a good life. I thought I was wasting my college years. But it’s the opposite, actually. I am nurturing my talents. I am, like Aristotle wants, trying to live virtuously by living justly, being a good friend, and having goals I will meet. One day, I will be happy, and it will be a private state of mind, and it will be nobody’s business but my own.