The Ultimate Philosophical Guide To Find Happiness
Most “How to” articles and guides to finally find happiness in life are filled by easy tricks and hacks that, do work, but for certain types of people, or to find an ephemeral and fleeting kind of happiness (that we usually call pleasure). We also get gaslighted by people trying to teach us “the best way to live”, and it feels unfair, because most influencers aren’t humble enough to accept publicly their bad habits, and make us feel like it isn’t normal to have them, like we are not living the way we are supposed to.
That’s why we have stoicism. Stoicism is a school founded by Zeno of Citium around the third century BC. They preach that virtue is the only good and is sufficient for ones happiness, and also, will help us find eudaimonia, which is the soul’s welfare (also, this is a concept created by the classic greek philosopher Aristotle).
Seneca, one of the most prominent authors of soticism, in his book De Vita Beata (On the happy life) tells us that one of our first problems that forbids us from finding happiness, is that we chain ourselves to things, to material stuff. To start our journey of happiness we must acknowledge that we own nothing but ourselves; everything else we share, everything else we borrow. The sea, the mountains, every piece of land is as ours as everyone elses; and that should be fine, why would we want to own anything besides the sea, the flowers, and every gorgeous landscape?
That doesn’t mean that we must deprive ourselves from material things; that means that we must use stuff consciously when we need it and when we have it, and when we don’t have it anymore, we will not suffer about that. When we have it, we will not save it greedily, nor will we waste it; we must use stuff wisely and detach ourselves from anything material.
The next step to finding virtue, and therefore, happiness, is to acknowledge ones journey, respect it and honor it remembering everyone has different goals and paces. We will find no progress criticizing other people or getting angry about their achievements. Stoicism says that, instead, we should feel happy for others (or feel nothing at all), and avoid speaking badly about their merits and achievements; not because we don’t want others talking badly about us, but because we will become slaves in another ones reality, and we will avoid our liberty focusing on the hate we feel for others.
We must become apathetic; that doesn’t mean not feeling anything for others, don’t let me be misunderstood. By apathetic I mean that we won’t get deeply and dangerously affected by other people’s thoughts on our own path, or our own thoughts on someone else’s life. We are still able to get sad, mad, happy, or whatever we want to feel, because we are human and it is healthy to feel, but the feeling won’t destroy us, or overwhelm us. It means we control our mind and our feelings so we won’t damage other people or ourselves.
Finally, in our philosophical guide to finding happiness, we must acknowledge that we are free. If we are not doing what we want to do, it’s because we are becoming slaves of our fears, of our possessions, and our mindset. We must find, in virtue, the room to grow and to find different ways to get where we want to go; allow things to flow, but also, take charge of our destiny, because if we don’t do it, we will become bitter obeying others will.
Freedom also means that all the wrongs that people have done to us, and all the necessities we think we have, are, in one way or another, illusions. We are free when we accept that we don’t need anything (having our bare necessities covered as food and shelter), when we accept that everything bad that happens to us may be leading us to somewhere brighter. Freedom is accepting with dignity anything that comes our way, knowing we are virtuous enough to take it. Virtue is freedom, and that will guide us towards happiness.
It wouldn’t be very stoic of me to be preaching about how life has to be lived in order to find happiness, nor to say that I live the way it’s supposed to. That’s why I don’t speak about myself, but about virtue. This path is about working on our own flaws and vices, and recognizing what will serve us well and what we need to let go; so, feel free to talk about virtue, because we all have an idea of what it may be, and we are all looking somewhere for it.
