A friend once said this to me : “Society just makes me so mad sometimes. But then I just think who cares. We’re all just going to die eventually anyways. And everyone's just too selfish and lazy to do any real good for the world anyways.” I thought on this awhile and realized something: Cynicism does nothing for me; I need to be an optimist. Too much so I think sometimes. I told her this and she responded, “I’m tired of optimism. All it does is hurt.” I thought again and I realized something else: That is what destroys life. Degeneration. We start happy and joyous and our world kills us. We have to fight back and be that happy one. We cannot just give in and be like every other defeated human.
Optimism is not a difficulty... when you fall to cynicism everything seems bleak; when you live in optimism everything is bright. Its not hard. Cynicism is hard. Just as frowning takes more muscles than smiling. If we allow our backs to be bent by perceived injustice we will never learn to truly enjoy ourselves
She told me she used to be happy, but it’s too hard now.
Joy is never found when one is lost in sadness. That seems obvious. Being happy is all a matter of willpower. You have to want to be happy. I know, that seems absurd, who wouldn’t want to be happy? What’s the point of being sad? The point of life? What is it? There is no point to life! And if there is no point to something should you not try to enjoy it all the more?
There is no great point, no world altering meaning. There is only one point: Pointless things usually are for enjoyment. And that is self. Our meaning is rooted in selfish things and selfishness engenders purpose, because we are here, by ourselves for ourselves. We are here only because we want to be here. That’s still not a point, nor a meaning.
Meaning is not real. It is self created. It is not found. You must decide for yourself what you enjoy and that is your purpose.
While reading this, I'll ask you now, whilst in the throes of true happiness, be it with friends or someone you love or something you love doing, have you ever questioned your purpose in doing it? The continuity of happiness, which is our purpose. The continuity of life.
Because life is for us and meaning made by us. Therefore we must create a meaning.
But no meaning is to be found in the realm of sadness because sadness, by definition, is rooted in a lack of meaning. And following this line of thought, the antithesis of sadness is rooted in doing something.
Searching.
Happiness is not found in the finding, it is in the searching and that brings us back to a former point: what are we searching for? What is the meaning?
We are searching for something to search for.
And that thing is inevitably something we will never obtain, it is when we realize this that we succumb to sadness, because if we do not ever find true happiness, what is the point? Those who are sad and apathetic have not yet crossed the next threshold.
Acceptance. A concept I have thought about before but never truly understood.
Its not finding true happiness that matters!
If we were always truly happy we would become disenfranchised with life, because there is nothing further. Because of this lack of meaning we would probably tear down our own happiness. Because we are all restless, we all want something to search for and when we have found it all semblance of meaning has been lost.
And so we have sadness.
Sadness when you recognize the need for searching, and sadness when you have found it. We are only truly happy when we know what we want, but cannot quite obtain it.
You might, at this point ask why? How?
Why do we need it and how do we find something to search for?
Purpose! We need purpose and we find the thing not by becoming apathetic and cynical, we find it by being optimistic, understanding that each bad thing is only a travesty if we allow it to be.
We keep walking.
Because if we don't we will wonder why we are walking and we won't know whether to keep going or to turn back.
So we walk.
And we find happiness in the walk.
I don't think we should ever question the understanding. We must learn to both accept and then react! Because when we question ourselves we have confused ourselves and thus lost our concept of happiness.
Don't be cynical. In cynicism we find loss and lack of action, in lack of action we find sadness and in sadness we find cynicism. It is a circle from which there can be only one escape:
