To answer this question, I need to ask myself many more questions. 'Achieving' means that I can do something to get to the state of 'happiness'? What can I do? Can 'happiness' be a goal? I don't think so. Yes, people all want to be happy, mostly by striving to fulfill their wishes and desires of all kind. But are they 'happy' when finally they could fulfill their dreams? One will be content, but to be happy it needs something more or something different, what is this?
Happiness as a state of being does not depend on outside situations and conditions, it is an inside condition. So then what is causing this condition and what is it exactly? Is it the feeling of being fulfilled or whole? A state when one is completely content with what there is? Then this is obviously the result of something. What has caused this? Might it be that this is the result of a life long striving for happiness or the result of finally giving up all intentions and coming to a state of just ‘being’?
Is the striving for happiness the intention to feel ones existence in a specific way and following a concept of happiness? We can observe that this doesn’t work and is causing a lot of frustration and disappointment with the follow up of depressions and a break down. So striving for happiness is not possible or can one see ‘happiness’ as a carrot that makes the donkey moving? But he never can reach it? Or might it be that during this ‘moving’ what also could be called ‘life’, something is growing and makes one understanding that the goal is not the important. It is the relating to what shows up on ones way one is walking. Relating and responding to what shows up, one can feel oneself and one can experience ones existence in the most present state and then this might be real happiness? But it seems that there is no way to talk about it, there is no way to get out of the conceptual thinking, one has to live ‘this moment’ and then will know what ‘happiness’ really is.
Resume: Is it possible to do something to achieve happiness? No, the concept ‘happiness’ can’t be realized. So what can we do? We can live in a responsible way, being conscious that we are here to grow and that whatever shows up in our daily life, is the best and most effective in our growing process if we are relating to what shows up and then responding to it the best way we are capable, being aware of our reactions, observing ourselves and our surrounding. Then there will come the moment when we will enjoy ourselves and what is there, without wanting to be it in a certain way, then out of this enjoying there might come something we might recognize as happiness…
BeiYin is the founder of FalconBlanco (since 1975), a place where a group of people live and work together in an alternative way, using daily circumstances in a creative way and seeing it as a challenge in their growing process...