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happiness, life

I always thought that the pursuit of happiness ( as enshrined in the constitution of the united states) was the noblest of goals and is what everyone should aim towards. I am not so sure anymore. In the last couple of years the more I think about happiness, the more I realise that a meaningful life is not necessarily a happy one. So it depends what you want from your life. Do you want to look back on your deathbed and say "I have lived a happy life" or would you rather say "I have lived a meaningful life and am leaving something behind and have made the world a better place". Do you want to just exist? or you want to create? if you want to create then the goal of happiness is not the right goal for you. For out of misery, melancholia comes some of the best art in this world. Out of suffering comes new ideas, world changing ideas. Not don't mistake my ideas - I am not suggesting suffering is what you should aspire to. In fact there are kinds of suffering that are actually just bad - they do no good. the physical kind of sufferings are such - hunger, physical pain, disease - nothing good comes out of it. What I am talking about is the suffering of the mind propagated by anguish over existence and the meaning of it all. The kind of suffering that makes you question your life and your choices and your existence itself.

Life is not simple, perhaps it was meant to be by Nature to be simple. By simple I don't mean easy - by simple I mean a defined life where we know what is expected. If it were up to Nature then the purpose of our life is perhaps straightforward - survive and reproduce for the greater good of the species. But, we humans have long left that behind. These rules of nature and life no longer apply to us. Hence it is our obligation, our duty to look beyond merely surviving. If not, what is the difference between us and animals. The least we should do is contemplate the meaning of life, try to find it - try to work out what it all means for you. Even if you don't succeed in finding the true meaning of our life I think it is our obligation as humans to at the least try to find it. 

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