Modern humans have been around for about 200,000 years. We have developed more radically than any other species on the planet. Still despite all of our achievements, advances, and development, we are plagued by the most basic and primal of all questions: What is the point of our existence? Since no other sentient creature seems to ask that and lives on and dies satisfactorily and, it's not unsafe to assume, happily, so maybe that question more leads to another big question.
How to be Happy?
Now as we are not new to the planet, our ancestors have gone through countless debates, arguments, theories, and philosophies. In a major epiphany, they have also come up with Communism vs. Capitalism and how one leads to the path to true happiness. Sure, that'd be all rad and cool if it was universally true and everyone could be magically "Happy" by changing the way the system worked. While it cannot be denied that some tweaks in the system would be more than helpful and welcome, we have been here for centuries. Surely there must be something that despite professions, age gaps, regions, religious spans over generations, over centuries to be the core of what defines happiness and sadness; something so clandestine yet so conspicuous that we can all relate to but cannot point out.
The highlights of an average life includes birth, the bliss moments of childhoods, followed by being flung into an adulthood filled with the existential dread of getting a job, falling and love, starting a family, and if fortunate enough doing something significant for the society and then being "happy" while doing all that. Still that five lettered word seems impalpable, slippery and many of us just wander through our lives in a semi-asleep state. Getting by our days while waiting for weekends to come to watch them fly by only to go through the monotonic, mundane days again in a cyclic fashion. Hoping that something or someone comes up which will wake up into the sweet ecstasy of being alive. It is fantastically amazingly superbly great if one does meet that someone or experience that someone but unfortunately often the reality is harsh and crushing.
All in all, this begs the question aforementioned: How to be happy? Perhaps the answer lies somewhere in the fact that we are here, in the present, it is all that matters. The past always gets glorified, the future will never be crystal clear, now is all we have. the renowned Albert Camus wrote in his Nuptials, "The world is beautiful and outside there is no salvation". We live our lives like Thales of Miletus who spent so long staring at the stars in speculation that he fell in a well. We turn something so requisite and beautiful into a wearisome, tiring, and complicated mess.
The Conclusion
It is normal and perfectly acceptable that not every moment will have a certain joy attached to it. Happiness maybe exists cause we know what sadness is. But in the end, the chances that we are here, feeling what we feel, thinking with a piece of meat that works by passing electrical signals, and experiencing life in all its sounds and colors is remarkable. The knowledge that nothing lasts forever is more reassuring than it is depressing. Knowing that difficult times will lead to blissful ones is uplifting. So we should chase those high peaks, live in those downs, cause in the end life is fleeting, we are neither omniscient nor omnipotent, just mortal.
Live in the present moment, know that everything, including your worries, will pass and that the world is more than just the problems, discover things and experiences that fulfill you, embrace the ones that break you down, and maybe ultimately, you will have realized that there was no happy or sad; all that mattered was not just existing or surviving as a husk and living the best you could.
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