The pitfalls of this pursuit?
If everyone is on the same journey there's this big contest. Darwin's whole idea about the 'survival of the fittest' applies so greatly it scares me sometimes. In life the people who aren't strong enough tend to fall down and get left behind by a world that refuses completely to stop turning. The strong survive and go on and continue to try and make sense of it. Harsh isn't it? There's competition and fighting and in a modern age the fights are different, they're emotional, psychological and tend to be a lot more about messing with people's heads than a primal instinct to repel other individuals. The "weak" and the "strong" have moved away from being defined as the individuals at peak physical fitness and those with the worst, but over to what seems to me like a battle of wills.
Here's where I think this idea of social Darwinism- in relation to a world where I see us as theoretically living to find happiness, this battle of the "strong" and the weak" is will related right? So even if you see yourself as weak, or you know you're weak, there's a certain element of species development. Human's adapt right? So what's to say someone of "weak" will has fallen down for the 99th time out of 100? Life is hard and people are mean and it all looks very bleak, and this "weak"person is laying face down somewhere (probably the floor of their room, maybe the school library) and they are thinking about giving up. They are thinking of removing themselves from this big race, this big pursuit of happiness. They're thinking it's too hard, it's too rough and I give up.
Maybe they lay there in acceptance of their fate, and cry or just lay silently. But maybe they only do that for 5 minutes, maybe 10. Maybe they sit up and brush themselves down. Maybe they sit there and realise this: you might fail, but if you try at something and it works out, you gain something great. If you don't try at all nothing will change.
I think that's a theory instilled in all of us as human beings. We have this amazing capacity to keep going, to keep fighting even when it gets really hard, when every ache in our body and pain in our chest tells us we can't do it, we defy every odd piled against us and pull through.
People are always looking for change, for bigger for better, for brighter. It's hard to understand the idea that happiness isn't an end goal. You can't reach happiness, you can't touch it and you can't contain it or keep it or store it for those days when it gets hard. Happiness can't be an end goal.
So what are we all pursuing? Why do we all have this idea in our heads that if we get that grade we'll be happy, that cookie will make us happy, that promotion, that boy, that girl, that dress- if we go here we'll be happy, if we move away we'll be happy, if we stay right where we are we are sure to be happy. Why? Why do we think like that?
Although I've never watched the film 'The Pursuit of Happyness' I was scrolling through the internet at an obscene hour of the morning and I found this quote:
"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?"
And this is what I was thinking about. Happiness is not the end goal, it's not the destination. It's the journey. While you're making your way and everyone's on this pursuit and you're caught up in this big race, stop yourself for a second and think about it- really think about it.
The things that make us happy, the possessions, the people the places- they're special. We find happiness not in our end goals but the rough time we have trying to get there.
We find it in the people we meet, on page 147 of a really good book, in old movies- we find it in the love we have for our parents, kids, sisters, brothers, friends. We find it in eating toast on the floor ar 3am, we find it climbing under a duvet with someone we love. We find it as we move through life, in our passions, in our music, in driving around at 11pm, old photos of when we were kids, We find it in the times we laugh so hard we think we might lose a couple of fairly essential organs, negotiating cobble stones in £15 high heels.
We're all on this great pursuit, getting caught up in the race to find this unfindable thing- when you realise it's all around us. Happiness is not something you can achieve because you have it. Happiness is not something you can chase because the simple act of chasing it means you are ignoring every opportunity to feel it, to have it. Thomas Jefferson had a pretty incredible insight when he decided what he felt the pursuit of happiness was.
Honestly. I don't know why I'm writing this tonight.
It was just one of those moments of clarity situations where I felt kind of overwhelmed with the idea that we write our own stories, we form our own pursuit of happiness.
It's been weird lately, things are a little rushed and a little out of place and I needed some time to slow down and think- and when I did I guess this happened.
If you want to ask anything or just say anything at all I'd love to hear from you
Goodnight everyone x
