I have not written any thing in my blog for quite some time My friend Qamar Beg asked me why i have not written anything for such a long time . Well the reason was that i did not know on what subject i should write. Then one day i asked myself , am i happy ? The answer was that in real sense no . I then started observing friends laughing ,joking , playing their favorite games
i wondered whether people who look superficially happy are really happy. Therefore, i decided that i need to study and write a series of articles on anatomy of happiness incorporating conventional wisdom about how to achieve happiness as well as the ancient and immortal thoughts of six philosophers on how to achieve happiness .
Every one wants to be happy. .According to Aldous Huxley , happiness is not achieved by the conscious persuit of happiness ;it is generally by-product of other activities.
The conventional wisdom is that a person is happy if he is contended with what he has, has a well adjusted matrimonial life , has well behaved children , enjoys job satisfaction , has a strong faith in his religion , meets his obligation to his parents, brothers,sisters and his fellow human being. which leads him to have peace of mind which bring happiness.
Lust for money, greed , material wealth , envy , social climbing do not bring happiness but are the main causes of brining miseries in once life.
Happiness, however , is just like a butterfly , it is difficult to catch it , you catch it and if you hold it for long time it dies and if you let it loose it flies away from you..
The philosophies of following six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life as guide to achieve is given below.
Socrates on Self-Confidence – Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own. We tend to accept that people in authority must be right. It is this assumption that Socrates wanted us to challenge by urging us to think logically about the nonsense they often come out with, rather than being struck dumb by their aura of importance and air of suave certainty.
Epicurus on Happiness The personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist, but an advocate of “friends, freedom and thought” as the path to happiness.
Seneca on Anger– Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument.
Montaigne on Self-Esteem – Looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself – sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority – and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.
Schopenhauer on Love The survey of the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards ‘the will-to-life’.
Nietzsche on Hardship The understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.:
i wondered whether people who look superficially happy are really happy. Therefore, i decided that i need to study and write a series of articles on anatomy of happiness incorporating conventional wisdom about how to achieve happiness as well as the ancient and immortal thoughts of six philosophers on how to achieve happiness .
Every one wants to be happy. .According to Aldous Huxley , happiness is not achieved by the conscious persuit of happiness ;it is generally by-product of other activities.
The conventional wisdom is that a person is happy if he is contended with what he has, has a well adjusted matrimonial life , has well behaved children , enjoys job satisfaction , has a strong faith in his religion , meets his obligation to his parents, brothers,sisters and his fellow human being. which leads him to have peace of mind which bring happiness.
Lust for money, greed , material wealth , envy , social climbing do not bring happiness but are the main causes of brining miseries in once life.
Happiness, however , is just like a butterfly , it is difficult to catch it , you catch it and if you hold it for long time it dies and if you let it loose it flies away from you..
The philosophies of following six thinkers who have influenced history, and their ideas about the pursuit of the happy life as guide to achieve is given below.
Socrates on Self-Confidence – Why do so many people go along with the crowd and fail to stand up for what they truly believe? Partly because they are too easily swayed by other people’s opinions and partly because they don’t know when to have confidence in their own. We tend to accept that people in authority must be right. It is this assumption that Socrates wanted us to challenge by urging us to think logically about the nonsense they often come out with, rather than being struck dumb by their aura of importance and air of suave certainty.
Epicurus on Happiness The personal implications of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270BCE) who was no epicurean glutton or wanton consumerist, but an advocate of “friends, freedom and thought” as the path to happiness.
Seneca on Anger– Roman philosopher Lucious Annaeus Seneca (4BCE-65CE), the most famous and popular philosopher of his day, took the subject of anger seriously enough to dedicate a whole book to the subject. Seneca refused to see anger as an irrational outburst over which we have no control. Instead he saw it as a philosophical problem and amenable to treatment by philosophical argument.
Montaigne on Self-Esteem – Looks at the problem of self-esteem from the perspective of Michel de Montaigne (16th Century), the French philosopher who singled out three main reasons for feeling bad about oneself – sexual inadequecy, failure to live up to social norms, and intellectual inferiority – and then offered practical solutions for overcoming them.
Schopenhauer on Love The survey of the 19th Century German thinker Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) who believed that love was the most important thing in life because of its powerful impulse towards ‘the will-to-life’.
Nietzsche on Hardship The understanding of Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900) dictum that any worthwhile achievements in life come from the experience of overcoming hardship. For him, any existence that is too comfortable is worthless, as are the twin refugees of drink or religion.:
