a tad of philosophy
April 14th, 2004 at 12:40 amA person always wants “something more”. “When I will have /this/ I will be happy”. When /this/ is reached, barely no excitement is shown (most of it fades away throughout the quest for /this/), but the person immediately picks another goal, and decides that “I will be happy when I’ll have /that/”. Excitement may be displayed externally, but inside, does the person feel truly happy that /this/ was achieved ? I think not. I think that the wish to have /that/ quickly overshadows this excitement.
Why is this so ? Many say that judging by this obvious paradox of life, happiness is in the pursuit of goals, not in the goals themselves. But is this true ? I don’t know…
Maybe this is what people mean when they “search for inner peace”. Inner peace in this context is the knowledge that there’s no /this/ and no /that/ I need to be happy. There’s nothing I need, I’m happy as it is.
Was it always like this ? I often cogitate about times when homo-sapiens was more primitive, and the main goal was just to survive, that is find food, shelter from enemies, and reproduce. Were people seeking /this/ and /that/ for happiness then too, or are these concepts new ? I wonder how new they are.
Sometimes I have a feeling that this has to do with societies - some people having more than the others, which makes it hard for those who have less. And not surprisingly, whatever you have, there’s always someone that has more than you, and this leaves you room to desire /this/ and /that/ and decide that you’re not happy until you achieve them.
There’s communism that tries to solve this problem by asserting that all men are equal, but this is flawed in its base, since ALWAYS some people will have more than the others…
So what is a solution ? Boy ! I’d wish to know…
Today I had this interesting thought when I was thinking about chess games. The amount of unique chess positions is huge, estimated to be larger than the amount of atoms in the known universe. Well, the amount of possible human lives is even higher, uncountably higher… Each person’s live is completely unique. No such live was ever lived, and no such live will be ever lived again. So, each person has this uniqueness implicitly, a uniqueness many seek… Could this be the key to being content with one’s life and finding “inner peace” ? Again, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting thought nonetheless.
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