Chasing Happiness
In whatever tiny little time humans exist on this earth in their current life form as humans, which in comparison to the timeline of the universe is a tiny drop in the ocean, all we do is keep running after something abstract and intangible as happiness. No one knows what this happiness chap has to offer, but nevertheless, life and the mere existence of people depends on this.
What is Happiness? Has anyone discovered it or been able to define it, well NO. It changes from situation to situation. The definition is fluid like a shapeshifter and people, seldom get very close to understanding what it means to them, and then poof it's all gone. The process of getting to the point is hard enough that we stop trying and then continue speculating what would be happiness or what would constitute happiness. Graphically speaking we can represent this quite well and lead to more intuition.
Going back to the times when humans were truly social animals as Aristotle famously proclaimed when we would live in groups, be nomadic, travel from place to place in search of food, there was no factor of constancy. Humans worked for the collective good and often the basic necessities of food, clothing, and shelter would do the trick to keep us happy as a species. Being lonely was never a possibility unless someone wanted to die.
When man decided to settle down and stumbled onto the science that plants can be grown in climates and soils which are conducive for their growth which would eliminate the need to wander over the world and search for, civilizations cropped up around fertile plains of the rivers in most of the continents. He decided to settle down, which made life easier and in turn, made us more greedy for more.
Skipping through history, and fast-forwarding to now, there are very few things that stimulate us or are able to evoke the emotions and chemicals which our brain would secrete when our ancestors would kill an animal which would feed the family, the sense of accomplishment has diminished over the years. Even if someone is able to write beautiful literature or write impeccable programs for computer systems, there already are hundreds if not thousands who do the same thing.
People want to stand out and the bar for feeling any sense of accomplishment has been set so high that young adults or even people well into their 40s find it extremely difficult to find purpose or direction in their life. The primal nature of feeling great after getting a good harvest or defeating a beast of prey to protect your family no longer comes to us while at the same time our basic wiring and brain makeup has not changed that much.
Nothing feels enough and people keep thinking about the next plan of action or how to better themselves, no one is stopping, taking a look at where they came from or what circumstances led them to where they are today and reveling in the fact that they did a great job. Who can blame us though, even babies get bored of the same toy after a few minutes and move on to the next one.
Happiness will never be found if chased. It comes to you, you just have to be able to identify it and soak in that moment because those couple of minutes or hours help us to continue living in this problem-ridden unsatisfied world with disappointments and sorrows
