An average youngster (regardless of having wrinkles on the skin, he can stay youthful by heart, hence the denomination “youngster”) arrives at the fatefully encountered room, shining with bright sun rays and swept by the morning breeze. Though quiet intrigued about what the settler of that chamber would say addressing his concerns, he washes off all lingering thoughts and sits on the fluffy and tension-easing red sofa, located right next to that wooden desk filled with papers, probably with the settler’s thoughts materialized on top of them. The settler, and as rightful author of those notes scattered around, picks one and sits down.
Reader: This might not be a question that's daily raised, but it has followed me during my few springs of life, and it concerns about the purpose of living. A hundred thousand theories can answer that, and among them, "to be happy" appears quiet often. Nonetheless, human beings tend to be more attentive to feeling pain than happiness. Based on that, it wouldn't be incorrect to assert that sadness appears more frequently, and as other hundreds of thousands of theories postulate, humans arrived at this world to suffer. If life operates this way, then, how can one be happy?
Author: A possible answer might be that humans are more susceptible on prioritizing the memory of the times they suffer, at the same time, leaving the instances when they can indeed categorize as "happy" eroding in their minds, which generates a vicious cycle of feeling sadness, and unable to get out of that negative environment emanated from within, which in turn makes getting out of it harder.
Reader: Is it easy to escape this atmosphere? Is it up to us to decide when and how to suffer? Or, even better, can we just completely avoid falling into the depths of sadness in the first place?
Author: We can start from the last question, since from it one can extrapolate an important idea. Pain or sadness is not necessarily something one should avoid (not to confuse meaningless and perpetual sadness, which should be evaded). Recall, not only that sadness is what allows you to understand the contrast between it and happiness, but also it is what will guide the human being to be happy. It all depends on how one addresses the situations in which the mechanisms of destiny subjugated one to feel sad or to suffer.
So then, what is being sad or suffering? The main idea to communicate is that no universal definition exists, since it all depends on what each individual identify as suffering, this feeling that is indeed negative, but not necessarily to be evaded, rather, to be exploited. For some, suffering can be the inability to accomplish a personal project meant to make a change after a vast amount of endeavor was poured in; for others, it can also mean the non-returning departure of loved ones; there are also who feel sad by being stuck in a solitary world, not being understood by the community surrounding him; while for others the inexorability of time's flow, which is the source of a lot of regrets... each individual is analogous to a book, full of particular tragedies that rejects generalization. Of course, given how reality was written, one often doesn't choose to be in pain, but it's something that can be taken advantage of when destiny had the idea of imposing this sentiment on the individual.
Though suffering has no universal definition, one can generalize on how to address that feeling. It's not about making it avoidable, but rather exploitable. In other words, sadness, or its brother suffering, is like a train station, in which a human being passes through it from a priori state of "immature happiness" to an a posteriori state of "mature happiness"; the individual cannot stop, since that alternative refers to the meaningless and perpetual suffering previously mentioned, and that, indeed should be avoided.
So new words are showing themselves on stage: what does immature happiness mean? (Though it's better described as "incomplete" happiness, and again, as said above, each individual should find its own interpretation of it by adapting it to his life).
Opting to stay in a state of incomplete happiness can lead to several consequences, among them, hedonism stands up, which means preferring instantaneous and brief gratification, averting “taking the next step”, running away from that horrendous feeling of stress, sadness, disappointment, of growing up… Indeed, this kind of exclusive (non-inclusive, evasive) happiness is incomplete because it is like an “arrival point”, the final station of life, which causes the individual to dive deep into a life packed by lies towards one self, vulnerable to the lack of autonomy, the loss of that dangerous sense of curiosity, abstaining oneself from confronting challenges since preventing it would be the chosen decision. Indeed, this would generate gratification; nonetheless, it would be instantaneous because it doesn’t promote further action, or preoccupation, that would deal with the uncertain future, but rather he would frame himself within a cage built in the immediate, known present.
This matter extends itself because another possible consequence pushes the individual into an endless abysm, one constituted by opportunism, that is, lacking a concrete plan to follow or a motivation to pursuit, instead letting the flow of time and space aimlessly pull him.
Furthermore, the hedonistic might also turn individualistic, since he would act on the desire only for self-satisfaction, limiting himself by achieving his own interests, and be conformed that the radius of his actions’ impact will be nadir.
Jumping out of this cycle of hiatus, that is, static, meaningless “happiness”, will generate pain, as it corresponds to a clash with reality. To start moving on is the same as embarking on a longer, twisted and more complicated journey, encountering involuntarily “sadness” and “suffering”, the stones that obstruct this larger road. What needs to be reinstated from that premise is to not stagnate oneself in this state. To move forward means to walk on defining a purpose or dream to which endeavor will be poured in to materialize it, escalating the stairs of surpassing the previous oneself, defining a new station, a new starting point from which to keep advancing day by day, instead of pausing. And indeed, this will presuppose the inevitable encounter of obstacles, the renowned “stress” tagging along, which will collectively incite a sense of futility towards one’s actions, inducing a chain reaction of self-disappointment and under-performance.
To hop on the station of “suffering” might also mean experimenting “loss” and “sacrifices”, which might be traumatizing, leading to depression… a plethora of feelings. To keep walking across this station means inquiring on the unknown and incomprehensible, probably causing a sense of drowning and triggers anxiety and desperation. Again, each individual is his own book full of particular tragedies.
Under these circumstances, it’s, indeed easy to declare that life was designed to make humans pessimistically suffer.
But nevertheless, for the pursuit of complete happiness it’s important to embrace that sadness, to exploit this suffering and extrapolate value/meaning from it, because it’s also a constituent of what one regards as “happiness”. Though it sounds contradictory, “happiness” and “sadness” were never incompatible to one another, instead, interdependent…they are complementary to one another.
Reader: How can one address these sentiments that are by nature painful? The eternal departure of a loved one that destroys the fragile heart… the failed attempt at accomplishing a personal project, which will ultimately not generate a change and be only a waste of time and effort… the defeat against a rival who has clearly established the difference of potentials…
Author: Take these not as depressing arrival points, but rather a new starting point from which you can advance further than before and appreciate the true, valuable and complete concept of happiness. The departure can be interpreted as a source of courage to accept the past and gaze at the future, to understand that tomorrow’s sun will always rise, one more stop to understand the longevity of love, to attribute the rightful importance to time’s briefness…On a completely different note, if one day immortality fell on the hands of each individual, one can forecast that the human being will seek suicide in order to understand the beauty of happiness derived from brevity, because if not, he will find himself in that state of hiatus, a cycle of stagnation for his emotional state.
A failure can be understood as a stone one must trip in order to extract the experience needed to better oneself in a second, or third, or fourth attempt (in the end, in cases where pristine devotion is poured, success means to not give up, not necessarily victory). That failure can be trans-mutated into something useful from which one learn to correct a previous error, be it internal emotional one, or external physical one, to reflect on own flaws, and from that it would be possible to adopt a Chinese proverb: “the jewel cannot be polished without friction, nor can man perfect himself without difficulties."
A defeat can be taken as a source of power from which one understands that one still has space for growth, to keep acting in order to surpass oneself, to self-assess mainly to better oneself, instead of self-demoralizing through disappointment.
In fact, if in a hypothetical scenario, success, the ecstasy originated from victory, the grandiose perfection of happiness were to coat the whole planet and its inhabitants, the human being will seek to open Pandora’s Box again, so that their feelings can fluctuate once more, so not to stay in a static inertial state.
Indeed, what happens when someone fails to understand the meaning behind sadness given by life is analogous to when one contemplates an artistic production. For instance, certain individual observes and admires the painting created by painter X, the colors are marvelously combined, the tracing is gentle yet impacts profoundly, and the texture is matchless, among other descriptions. However, such individual will not contemplate the years of learning and effort invested by painter X, the accumulated experience that allowed him to withstand the stressful progress of inspiration, portraying thoughts, materializing them and concluding the work. Another way to look at this issue of superficially understanding the world is for instance when one is able to surf around the web or search for data in a massively used webpage, which doesn’t necessarily mean grasping the diverse and complicated mechanisms behind that which sustain the functioning of the web, or how to exploit them in one’s favor in order to deepen the exploration of what is superficially known of the Internet (similar to someone who limits himself on contemplating the tip of an iceberg, while ignoring the whole structure that extends itself to the deepest entrails of the blue ocean). Similarly, but not the same, one experiences sadness in life and it’s easy to stay in a inertial state contemplating pain, while the way out is simple and just requires paying more attention to sadness: understand its value and meaning behind it, which is to teach on how to become happier.
It’s not complicated what’s being proposed, one must accept all the flavors that life (or fate) provides to the individual, be it an affectionate sweetness, furious spicy, bitter painful, exciting sour, taking into consideration that no matter how negative the flavor is, it’s there for the human to digest it, otherwise, to exploit it to propel himself into living a life he deems “happy”. In the end, if “happiness” is a tree, then its roots would be sadness, since it’s what allows it to grow up.
Beyond that beautiful horizon, an enormous balloon of hot gas is set to go down and disappear after the twilight. After it goes dark, maybe a series of misfortunes might be bestowed to humanity. Pain, sadness, horror, death, stench have always permeated into society in that regard. Nonetheless, it seems that the Sun will always rise up to the blue sky illuminating all inhabitants of Earth; it doesn’t seem to give up despite the history of humanity…light will always come again, dark will accompany it afterwards. Then, there is no reason to discriminate the night, nor emphasize the day, but rather both of them can always come together and be embraced by humanity, as they did to humanity.
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