Her: I think the point of life is to run after what is important and not give up until you have it.
Me: But how do you know what is important.
Her: Happiness, of course. Everybody deep down wants to be happy.
Me: But not everybody is happy all the time, are they?
Her: I don’t know.
Me: I think its got to do with change. Most people are so scared by it that they try their best to avoid it… Not knowing that they are holding onto that same old unhappy state by choosing not to change.
Her: Yeah I get what you are saying, How would you know without experiencing something new if it makes you happy? I think true happiness comes is new experiences. I don’t want to die without experiencing everything that is beautiful and amazing…
Me: Then again… maybe life isn’t all about experiencing everything… I know there are schools of philosophy that believe that the true path to happiness is experience of everything that is beautiful and extraordinary…
Her: Thats my point. I don’t think I want to go thru life without experiencing everything
Me: But there are other schools of philosophy where they believe minimalism is the way to go. For a long time I have been fascinated by Buddhist Monks, I have been to many monasteries and everywhere I see monks who are genuinely happy. These people have given up everything they own and they are happy.
Her: hmmm
Me: The point here is that they have actually not given up everything they love to do. Its a process of stripping away the important parts of your life and reducing it to the bare minimum. In the process you just retain all that makes you happy slowly forsaking things that hurt you.
Her: But that doesn’t work for everybody.
Me: Thats the point, I believe there is no fixed way to become happy. Each person must find their own way… I guess the point is to never give up… There was this documentary I watched a while back(What the bleep do we know?) in which they explained how our body behaved to situations to generate emotions… In short what it said was that there is a part of the brain (forget the name) which is like a chemical factory, it keeps producing different chemicals for the body based on the experience. So say you experience something that makes you angry, a specific chemical is produced and is flooded to your body. Thats why when you get angry you feel it all over your body, just like most emotions.
Her: Ok but what has that got to do with happiness.
Me: Happiness it turns out is just another emotion. So what this means is that everything that you need to make you happy is already with you. All you have to do to be happy is to choose to be happy.
Her: Like “stop existing and start living”?
Me: Exactly. I know far too many people who spend their lives waiting to be happy. I will be happy when I buy that, I will be happy when I go there, I will be happy when i am with her/him… The point is “if you want to be happy, be”! That is actually a quote by Leo Tolstoy :)
Her: What you are saying is good but we cant just live like that. I mean, I cant be doing something and before I feel angry or sad or happy cant think that some piece of my brain is firing something at the rest of me to make me feel like that. Sometimes you just have to let go and feel the emotion.
Me: But if you choose not to feel an emotion you can… Those monks I spoke about choose never to get angry at anything
Her: Is that even possible for a normal person.
Me: A friend of mine once told me that anger is the “lack of acceptance”. Maybe its how someone treated you or something someone said or something you or someone did… you tend to get angry coz you cant accept that. When you accept someone’s rude comment and tell yourself that the person was upset over something and said it what ever he/she did in anger… you will empathize with the person and not get angry with them.
Her: Do you think that would work?
Me: It seems to…
Her: But wont that pent up anger burst out later or something
Me: This is not like counting to 10 and not hitting someone. This is a way of justifying to yourself that there is no need to be angry about anything. I think doing this regularly changes how you react to situations.
Her: And change is good…
Me: Not always… But we wont know if we are can be happier if we don’t change will we.