Where is Happiness? The Question was Answered Two Millennia Ago
Shammas, Michael. "Where is Happiness? The Question was Answered Two Millennia Ago. The Huffington Post. October 25, 2016.
2 Pages Posted: 11 Dec 2019
Date Written: October 25, 2016
Abstract
“Where is happiness?” For years this was my driving question, and it proved a persistent one — not because it was stubborn, but because I was. I insisted on looking in all the wrong places. I looked in so-called accomplishments — law school, publishing, test scores. I looked in others — friends, girlfriends, family. I looked in objects — video games, books, movies. At my lowest points, I looked in the easy lull of alcohol or other ersatz vices. And yet, this thing — “happiness” — never lingered. Every now and then I’d grab hold of it, yet like a hand-caught fish it would promptly squirm away. Because (and here’s a cliché that’s easy to recall yet difficult to live) happiness is not outside. Happiness is inside.
As the Stoics — members of a philosophical movement founded by a Phoenician merchant and explicated in ancient Greece and Rome — knew, happiness lies in the one thing none of us ever lose: The ability to choose how we respond to any given situation. For it is not things that trouble us, but our interpretations of those things.
Keywords: stoicism, marcus aurelius, xeno of citium, zeno of citium, musonius rufus, seneca, epictetus, the discourses, the enchiridion, the meditations, lucilius, philosophy, happiness, the good life, self-improvement, william b. irvine, tranquility, equanimity, virtue, peace, arete, antiquity
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