Last night I watched a youtube video that Alain de Botton made some years ago, about Epicurus and his view on happiness.

In this video, he mentions that Epicurus believed that we could all find a way to be happy. The problem was, simply, that we were looking at the wrong place. Epicurus said

What we want is not always what we need.

Best example? Shopping, Alain de Botton says. We keep buying things we think that'll make us happy, and they do, for some minutes (or even hours if you're lucky) but then that feeling wears off. We don't care that we got this super-wow dress, or watch, or, or. It's another thing to actually need a pair of shoes and another to own some 30 pairs.

Well, a lot of times I hear people complaining they don't know what they want. Then again I hear others saying they are happy, but just for a little while. It doesn't last. Most happy people I know - and now that I come to think of it I don't know that many - seem to have a deeper system of values, in which they rely and live by at their everyday living. Something like a deeper sense of their lives. Like changing clothes day after day but keeping the same body underneath. Ok, not the best metaphor but you get it.

I think happiness isn't something we can feel all the time. It's an instant feeling. But then again, I believe there's a deeper sense of happiness, maybe called something else, I don't know, that lies beneath what happens to our everyday living. It's like deep down you're a happy person, or you're not. These later years I come to find I'm a much happier person than I was six years ago. It took an evaluation of what I consider important in my life and some frequent reminders, to have that state of mind. I'm not always happy, sometimes I become way too miserable or even furious but I think after all, I'm happy. With my choices, with my relationships, with my work, with my life.

Do you think we ought to be happy? I mean we all try too hard, but is it really as important as advertisers make us think? And how really can one give a definition of happiness? I think that general happiness, for me, has something to do with inner peace. I don't know, I'm actually trying to figure that out. What about you? What do you mean by happiness? How do you define it? And would you happen to know any happy people? Are you one of them?

Oh yeah, the video Epicurus On Happiness