Before you read the rest of this post, I would suggest you all to listen to this song:
It might even help to listen to it with the lyrics. In case you didn't know, some of Asher Roth's previous songs include I Love College, and Blunt Cruisin. He always had good flow, and the songs were catchy, but I gained a ton of respect for him after this song. He does rip it. His message fit perfectly about something that I have been thinking a lot about lately.
So what exactly is happiness? Why does every single person in the world want to experience this feeling of happiness all the time?... and more importantly: How do you achieve the pursuit of happiness?
I totally understand that the idea of explaining this largely abstract and undefined sensation of happiness goes way beyond a simple blog post, this can be a good starting point to get you thinking.
So what is happiness? Merriam-Webster's dictionary defines it as a state of well-being and contentment. Psychology texts define it as 'subjective well-being'. In other words, one's perception of their state of well-being and contentment. But what does that mean?
A good starting point is to identify some underlying truths about happiness, that apply to every single person on earth.
"...Yeah, yeah, yo, yo, This one's for the people
All the bees that'll bleed, And they sleep and they eat
Shit, Breathe, The thought we all equal
Ain't a man on the God's green be underneath any other..."
So the first step is to question whether or not you think the same concepts and rules of happiness apply to every single person on earth, irregardless of region, society, culture etc. Lets leave religion out of this for now, but Asher thinks that because we all sleep, eat, breathe etc., that we are all inherently the same. Taking that as evidence, lets proceed with the assumption that the same rules apply for happiness.
This implies, that in theory, the same rules of achieving happiness apply to a wealthy north american youth, and a poverty stricken orphaned youth in a developing country. That seems to be a very powerful statement on the surface, but it is this disillusioned view of happiness that rejects the idea of such statements of equality.
"...Bout time to change a few things
We enslaved to the bank and we only wanna buy new shoes
The way that we think
We can do anything that we really wanna put our minds too
The american dream, the dream is a pyramid scheme, scheme
And it feels outta reach when it's hard and times are tough
But change starts with us yep, yep..."
I think those lines are pretty much self explanatory. In the United States, the top 20% of households by wealth, own upwards of 85% of the countries wealth. A common response to this is: "Of course, everyone knows that money doesn't buy happiness". Yes, that may be the case. But... not many people really know enough about happiness and how to achieve it, and so if you market a product or service effectively enough, you can convince the population that they need to spend money in order to increase their perceptive state of well-being. Welcome to the capitalism. Oops.. now I am getting side-tracked again.
Now that I have outlined a common contradiction in the pursuit of happiness, we can get back to figuring out what happiness is, and how to pursue it. From what I have covered so far, happiness is a perceptive feeling of contentedness, that leads to positive emotions, like joy and satisfaction, and the ideal pursuit of it must be achievable by every single person on earth, irregardless of circumstance.
"...Yea it's all about believing, full steam ahead
Because I know the worst times are behind me
I don't wanna sound cheesy, but, but, but
It's just, I really mean it, eh, eh, yea
I'm tellin' I can feel it, eh, eh
It's the reason I don't sleep, I'll be way too geek tonight..."
This blog post is getting too long, and so I'm going to leave it with those few lines. Next time, I will get into Aristotle's philosophy of happiness, in which it is contentedness and the ease of satisfaction with ultimately makes one happy. I also have some great link's about this stuff that I will share in the future too. Stay tuned.
"...I don't wanna play preacher
But, but I swear they turn their ear when we talk about peace and love
Sometimes might need a hug, yeah
We all wanna come on up above..."
For now, next time you feel unhappy, get someone to give you a hug and tell you that everything will be okay. If you can convince yourself (believe) that is true, then how can you not be happy?
