Happiness Is Being Content Philosophy Essay

Happiness Is cosmos Content Philosophy EssayHappiness is being content with what you make in your life. It comes down to two different types of rejoicing. The first type is a corporeal rapture that comes from material things including food, shelter, clothing, cars, technological devices and anything else that that physically exists and is an object of desire. The mho type of happiness is much more abstract it is a sorting of spiritual or inborn happiness. It comes from being at relaxation or from achieving a state of familiar contentment. As the saying goes, the truth lies somewhere in the middle and it is my belief that exclusively finished a arrant(a) balance of these two sources of happiness can one be rattling happy, which is, in a way, to be content.The fourteenth Dalai Lama Tenzin Gyatso speaks of happiness in much the same way. When asked by Howard Cutler to speak round desire, the Dalai Lama replies, I think there ar two conformations of desire (Cutler 1000). The Dalai Lama says of the material desire I previously identified I think that this kind of excessive desire leads to greed-an exaggerated form of desire, based on over expectation. He goes on to say, When it comes to dealing with greed, one thing that is quite feature film is that although it arrives by the desire to mother something, it is not satisfied by obtaining (Cutler 1001). I completely agree with him on this item, that material desire can call on excessive and lead to insatiable greed. However, it is my belief that happiness comes from fulfilling desire, which is, in part, fulfilling glib material desire. that that is not all that constitutes happiness. As the Dalai Lama says, The unbent antidote of greed is contentment. If you suck in a strong sense of contentment, it doesnt be whether you obtain the object or not either way, you are chill out content (Cutler 1002). This kind of inner contentment comes about through the blink of an eye type of happiness I s poke of, the spiritual or natural happiness.Natural happiness or inner contentment is a instead difficult thing to explain, as it is a actually abstract inclination. intimate contentment cannot be instal through material things. It comes from oneself, from one do peace with what they consent and understanding that they cannot cede everything. Howard Cutler, the Dalai Lamas companion, asks How can we achieve inner contentment? thither are two methods. One method is to obtain everything we desire and desire The second, and more reliable, method is not to have what we want only if rather to want and appreciate what we have (Cutler 1002). It would await that Cutler, the Dalai Lama, and I share many of the same views. Inner contentment itself comes from making peace with what we already have, moving past the desire of wanting material things.However, it should be made clear that we are discussing happiness, not contentment. enjoyment, inner contentment, certainly comes from a chieving a peace with what one has and accepting that one cant have everything. still that is only contentment. True happiness comes from a balance of both contentment and desire. It comes from striking a balance between the two methods of achieving inner contentment.But this is only one persons happiness. Philosophers such as Epictetus would argue that happiness does not come about through these methods. Epictetus taught that The goal of life is happiness or flourishing life. The way to achieve this condition is to understand the nature of the safe(p) (Barnet and Bedau 995). He argued that The only true full(a) is virtue. Yes, wealth can be useful, but it is not good or bad Poverty is not bad but is virtuously indifferent (just as wealth is morally indifferent) The life that is happy or fruitful is the virtuous life (Barnet and Bedau 995). Epictetus was possible speaking about happiness as a whole or happiness for the greater good. One persons happiness may not be the same as a nothers, but I agree with Epictetus that happiness comes about through living a virtuous life. I would call this reading material of happiness a profane contentment. This is, of course, different from the inner contentment previously discussed.Daniel Gilbert adds onto this idea of contentment. In his essay Does Fatherhood Make You knowing? he explains that having children generally makes a parent happy. Psychologists have measured how mountain feel as they go about their daily activities, and have found that people are less happy when they are interacting with their children than when they are eating, exercising, shop or watching television (Gilbert 985). He starts off by stating how studies have shown that parents become less happy when they have children around them and how they would rather be spending time doing other things to make them happy, but later counters this idea with his reasons from personal experience.First, when something makes us happy we are willing to pay a l ot for it, which is why the worst Belgian chocolate is more costly than the best Belgian tofu. But that process can work in reverse when we pay a lot for something, we assume it makes us happy, which is why we swear to the wonders of bottled water and Armani socks (Gilbert 985). Gilbert brings toward a materialistic view very similar to the Dalai Lamas. We are willing to sacrifice for material wants and desires but only true happiness lies in contentment.Gilbert compares children to heroin, while it may seem irrational his points are made clear. Children give parents a feeling of amusement that makes them forget everything else around them. The analogy to children is all too clear. Even if their order were an unremitting pleasure, the fact that they require so much company inwardness that other sources of pleasure will all but disappear (Gilbert 986). I interpret this as another form of contentment. Because of how satisfying it is to have children, it makes a parent content that they dont need anything else.Lewis proposes a countercultural idea, that we actually have no adept to happiness. Some people believe that happiness is a right and is supposed to be given out, or is required to be provided by the government, like a right. In all reality that is true, but to an extent, we do have a right to happiness we also have a right to earn happiness. We are all provided with the resources to do so. As in all rights we are provided with there still is some kind of boundary.If we imbed a right to (sexual) happiness which supersedes all the ordinary rules of behavior, we do so not because of what out passion shows itself to be in experience but because of what it professes to be while we are in the grip of it (Lewis 1006). Lewis would say that pursue happiness is alright as long as you are inwardly legal and moral laws. In other words, living a good life is a means to pursue happiness.Thus the question of what is happiness can be defined in multiple ways. For one person, it is through achieving a state of inner contentment through finding a balance between material desire of what one does not have and a desire of what one already has. In the context of worldly or societal happiness, happiness is found through living a life of virtue and thus being fulfilled, or finding contentment, in that manner. Happiness is all of these things.Happiness, however, isnt a destination to reach. Its a perception, a mindset. There are those that believe that people are born with this mindset. There are others who believe that each of us can achieve this perception barely by redirecting our thoughts. Both are true. Sometimes it takes a really trying event to make us realize how thankful we are for what we have rather than desiring what we dont have. The secret to happiness is contentment a still point of realization that happiness is found within, not through external measures and possessions. Contentment is more than being grateful for the small things in life, it is being grateful for simply being. Contentment is a song the heart sings in the peace of mind moments of the day. Can you hear it?