Happiness & the Meaning of Life
Happiness & the Meaning of Life is a philosophical study of the art (and science) of living well. The course explores the writing and philosophy of Aristotle, Seneca, the Buddha, Epicurus, William James, and many others. Expect to learn perennial lessons (and practices) to help you flourish in the modern day.
When you look up the word happiness, it’s usually defined as “the state of being happy” or “a state of well-being and contentment.”
But what does it actually mean to “be” happy in modern life? Strangely, it’s a more challenging question than one might think.
The Art of Happiness
In No Mud, No Lotus (a book we read for Reading & the Good Life), the late Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh explained,
We all want to be happy, and many books and teachers in the world try to help people be happier. Yet, we all continue to suffer. Therefore, we may think that we’re ‘doing it wrong.’ Somehow, we are ‘failing at happiness.’ That isn’t true. Being able to enjoy happiness doesn’t require that we have zero suffering.
Hanh continues,
In fact, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well. When we learn to acknowledge, embrace, and understand our suffering, we suffer much less. Not only that, but we’re also able to go further and transform our suffering into understanding, compassion, and joy for ourselves and others.
The art of happiness connects with the practice of “being” where we are. Despite the profound differences between Stoic and Epicurean doctrines, the underlying principles (along with many other wisdom traditions) focus on living in the present moment. The French philosopher and historian Pierre Hadot remarked in Don’t Forget to Live that Epicureanism and Stoicism privilege the present over the past—especially the future.
But what if “being” where we are is only one side of the equation? Several wisdom traditions also stress the idea of “becoming” who we are. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus stressed to his students,
How long are you going to wait before you start demanding the best for yourself?
Now granted, demanding the best for ourselves likely involves learning to ‘be’ where we are. But the good life is also an ethical life; philosophical and spiritual traditions universally urge us to think about virtue as action.
The Paradox of Happiness
One might ask, “What is more important, being or becoming?” A critical idea that runs through this course is both/and thinking or the way of paradox. In a recent conversation with Mark Matousek (the author of Lessons from an American Stoic), discussed an exercise called Making Space for Paradox,
Reflect on the doubleness of experience and how apparent opposites can be equally true at the same time. Remember that there are two sides to what happens, at least, and that wisdom results in the ability to hold opposing truths in your mind at the same time without either canceling the other out.
Matousek explains that an overarching whole encompasses both, as the circle makes space for yin and yang. We are wise to explore the contradictions and paradoxes of our lives and how they fit together to make a whole.
