GUEST BLOG: The Art of Being Happy

Is Within Yourself

Credits:

Picture: N/a; Words: AG

In the quest of trying to make this blog a little bit more versatile and inclusive, I have now opted on discovering new ways of shaking things up a notch... Bringing on some creative, cool, collected minds and generally people who are open to sharing a little bit of themselves whilst highlighting topics they feel passionate about. The purpose of this blog is so much more than just random rants, It is about using people in my surrounding whom I admire to pour out their gifts and souls to you guys for a little dollop of inspiration.the journey has just got interesting. This is a very exciting new conquest that also requires your precious feedback. But in the mean time, Happy reading!! :) Fufu

Words by “El” Rehema Mussanzi

I was watching a TED Talk this morning by Lisa Bu entitled “How books can open your mind” in which she shares her unique approach to reading with an enthusiastic audience in Long Beach, California, when I had an epiphany. About half way through the talk she made a comment which sparked me to examine what we, as human beings, consider to be the art of being happy. She said “it’s through translation that I realised ‘happiness’ in Chinese literally means ‘fast joy’”. Really! Fast joy?

 

Well, it occurred to me that the one question we all ask ourselves at varying points in life is what is the goal of living? How does one live a happy life?
 

While working on the book To Have or To Be? Erich Fromm wrote far more manuscripts and chapters than were actually used in the book published in the mid 1970s. Some of those chapters were later collated to make The Art of Being which was first published in Great Britain in 1993. In The Art of Being, Fromm provides some firm answers to the first question asked above and I would highly recommend the book although one has to read it keeping in mind the context in which it was written. In the book, he alludes to the fact that people will generally give different answers to the question, what makes life meaningful? Some will say love, others power, others fame, others pleasure; but most will say happiness. This is what philosophers and theologians over the years have declared to be the aim of human striving. What then is happiness? Is it a state of mind or is it simply a ‘fast joy’? Let’s examine the latter first.

Today we live in a world that thrives on offering us fast joys. Most songs in the popular music genre played on radios and music channels on TV last on average three minutes. Thirty seconds television and radio adverts promoting “revolutionary” products that we have to buy in order to remain “current” form arguably the bedrock of our capitalist societies. Hollywood movies exploit our short-term memories by transporting us into other realities for an average of an hour and a half only for us to be teleported back into the real reality. Pornographic websites are as accessible as they have ever been providing fast joys while arguably destroying the real meaning of love and sex. I could go on and on but I hope we get the point. It has to be noted however that the same points raised on fast joys may form part of the real source of happiness for others. Relativity has to be taken into perspective and circumstances may demand we seek fast joys to enhance our state of happiness. Nonetheless, total reliance on fast joys is not sustainable to live a happy life. What constitutes a sustainable happy life then?

The Oxford Dictionary defines the noun pleasure as “a feeling of happy satisfaction and enjoyment”. It can therefore be argued that happiness stems from pleasure. And if that is the case, sustainable happiness then means finding pleasure in a chosen long-term career or spending more time with the people we love, etc. Again this is a relative thing. Some people will say they find sustainable happiness in giving, others in their belief in God, others in caring for the weak, others in scientific breakthroughs; and most will say in a countless of things.

Happiness is very much subjective and I suspect everyone will have or ought to have an opinion on what makes them happy. The challenge however is that there is no such thing as life without pain. Pleasure and pain replace each other in life. They are both momentary although momentary can mean a minute to one and a year to another or anything in between or over. Sustainable happiness for that reason requires the ability to deal with or triumph over pain. That is essentially the art of being happy. And as the saying goes art is for art’s sake. Meaning, the only aim of art is the self-expression of the individual artist who creates the art. The choice is ours.

References

 

Lisa Bu: How books can open your mind http://www.ted.com/talks/lisa_bu_how_books_can_open_your_mind.html

Fromm, Erich (1976) To Have or To Be? New York: Harper & Row

 

Fromm, Erich (1993) The Art of Being London: Constable

 Oxford Dictionary Pleasure