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.
“We are called upon to do something new, to confront a no man’s land, to push into a forest where there are no well-worn paths and from which no one has returned to guide us. This is what the existentialists call the anxiety of nothingness. To live into the future means to leap into the unknown, and this requires a degree of courage for which there is no immediate precedent and which few people realize.”
— Rollo May, The Courage to Create
How do you define courage?
What does courage actually look like in your daily life?
The American essayist Ralph Waldo Emerson believed that we need courage for virtually everything we do. Emerson stressed,
Whatever course you decide upon, there is always someone to tell you that you are wrong. There are always difficulties arising that tempt you to believe your critics are right. To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requires some of the same courage that a soldier needs. Peace has its victories, but it takes brave men and women to win them.
If you set out to intentionally lead your life (or even begin to contemplate it), you will likely encounter what author Steven Pressfield calls resistance.
In his book The War of Art, Pressfield explains, “Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of resistance.” Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and our soul's growth. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no resistance, according to Pressfield.
In his classic book, The Courage to Create, existential psychologist Rollo May described the inevitable need for courage:
This courage will not be the opposite of despair. We shall often be faced with despair, as indeed, every sensitive person has been in this country during the last several decades. Hence, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche and Camus and Sartre have proclaimed that courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair.
Courage is not a virtue or value among other personal values like love or fidelity. It is the foundation that underlies and gives reality to all other virtues and personal values. Without courage, explains May, our love pales into mere dependency. Without courage, our fidelity becomes conformism.
Courage is necessary for human beings to make being and becoming possible. We are wise to remember that embarking on a path to becoming happier or creating meaning in daily life requires courage.
Final Thoughts
We are called to discern what truly matters. The Danish theologian and philosopher said, “The thing is to understand myself: the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.” Kierkegaard called it the most important thing.
