“But we can still participate in a deeper and more lasting sense of happiness when we choose the life of meaning over that of mere happiness. Happiness stays with us longer when we let it come uninvited rather than on-demand.”
Happiness or meaning! Which would you choose?
Happiness is about how we feel, physically and mentally, so its attainment is a matter of attention to one’s self. Meaning, on the other hand, is about how we are spiritually oriented toward the other, an activity that by nature must aim at something beyond and greater than one’s own self. This problematic situation reminds me of Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
The problem with the pursuit of happiness is that no matter how much we improve our surrounding conditions to be conducive of our happiness, we will soon get accustomed to those very conditions and the good feelings wear off. As a result, we lose ourselves to an endless project of an ever more intricate maintenance of our physical and mental states. Unlike the pursuit of meaning that opens us to the other, the sole pursuit of happiness shuts us off from the other.
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