Life, Liberty, and the...

I've written a lot about the unhappy things in the world, written a lot, and thought even more, about how to disable and dismiss those unhappy things into the void of history, memories rare to never visited.  Let me rule the world for three months and I’m confident I could make some changes that would work serious improvements in a couple of key areas, set in motion some things that would over the decades evolve into a truly serious defense of what is decent and desirable.  Yea, if I ruled the world.  But, thank you God, I don’t. 

Still though, all of that thinking on the negatives has shown up above and beyond everything else one key and critical thought that desperately needs mapping.  Just as peace is not the same thing as the absence of war happiness is not the same thing as the absence of misery.  An army cannot make peace, neither shaman nor shrink can truly make happiness.  Needed functions, all of them, but to my thought far to often misapplied by reason of failure to understand the fact presented above.  They can establish an environment able to support the higher state of life, an environment free of active impediments to the desired outcome, but cannot in and of themselves actually accomplish the work desired.  Why? Because they no more understand what is actually involved with establishing such a higher state of being than anyone else does.

Happiness would seem a terribly fragile thing, delicate as a soap bubble floating on the breeze.  Pop.  It’s gone, and all we have are memories, fleeting memories hard to hold, of that most desirable state.  That’s the way you always hear about it, in the past tense, something once known and forever after sought in any and every endeavor humanity has ever conceived for itself, perpetually the prize of prizes in the competitions of life from the excesses of gross materialism to the gross excesses of social sex and sensuality over-driven to become absolute sin.

Happiness would seem impossibly fragile, and yet the logic of nature, the logic of balance in all things says it can’t be that fragile.  Can’t be, not really, for the basic definition to have survived there must be an amount of happiness equal to the sum of its’ inverses.  Were this not true then the word happiness would have fallen away from defining a primal state of being just above the division between living and dead to become perhaps a symbol representing something at best considered an anomaly, an eccentricity, more likely to have become a symbol representing something considered a dysfunctional state of irrational self deception. 

I’ll give you that when pressed on the subject there are many who will say that as a matter of quiet fact this is already the case, but I stand aloof from their assertion.  The fact the vast majority of those who will make such a claim have serious ulterior motives for such a pessimistic attitude leaves their voracity very suspect indeed.    Think about it for a minute or two, look at how often the world around you finds its’ motivations, its’ reasons and its’ rationalizations from the idea of happiness as an absent commodity that must be acquired as a sideline consequence of some other thing. Seriously.

What happens to the advertiser, and the industry being represented, should even half of the potential customers say “thanks, it’s a pretty piece of work but you can sell it to someone else who might really need it, I’m already happy.”  What happens to religion when it can’t sell subscriptions based on the idea that the Heaven they promise is a better place than Earth by reason of the idea that Heaven is a place where happiness is the standard state of being while life on Earth is the opposite?  How fares the satyr, the succubus, in their carnal pursuits when the focus of their lust laughs and says “it sounds interesting, might be fun, but no, no thanks, think I’ll pass for tonight and stay with the happiness I already have.”  Right.  It would take the wind right out of all sorts of things to the point they'd just sort of, well, stall out and fall like a rock. 

Not even the American Declaration of Independence is free from this assumption. As examples of what is considered a human being’s absolute rights the document reads “Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…”  Not the possession of happiness, but the pursuit of it.  A very, very potent difference in ultimate outcome, implying as it does that  we have the right to pursue happiness, but no inalienable right to possess it should our pursuit apprehend it.   

Ok, probably true enough, and still of no real value to fixing the problem.  Why is it happiness is the ultimate goal, and yet the understanding of what it is and how it might best be created within a life all but taboo? (Please notice, I said created, not found, not caught, not bought, but built…)  If logic gives that happiness cannot be nearly as scarce as is commonly assumed then why is it not better known?

There has to be a reason, and that reason is my quest for the year 2015.  In 2013 I finally fit all the pieces into the puzzle as to my history, the how my life was shaped by forces cold and covert, 2014 was dedicated to assessing and designing the repair work, I think in 2015 it would be fitting to actually investigate this riddle and perhaps, maybe, put a bit of light on the subject for myself and others.  It can’t help but be a useful understanding in the effort of, as I said in my last post, of filling in that hole with things of satisfaction, and delight. 

The subject is happiness, not what it isn't, but rather what it is, and more importantly, how to set about building some.  More to come as the words find their way to me… for now I can sense the shape, but not set it to words, not yet.  The first order of business is figuring out why the words want to hide… catch you later world.