Meaning From Within (A College Essay)
Blurred Perception of Happiness Humanity has always yearned profoundly for its sense of meaning and happiness; the only question that begs answering then is whether or not the individual himself constitutes that which he longs for, or will he merely allow the mob to indoctrinate him upon what he must desire? Modern civilization has quite a disheartening definition for the thought of happiness: something acquirable through external factors. In other words—man’s acknowledgment that his happiness is outside of his control when he constitutes happiness as something that must be attained extrinsically. Should happiness be constituted by such a definition, how then can humanity reconcile itself with the tragedy of existence if its counterpart—joy and happiness—is without arm’s reach? Schools of thought such as Stoicism, Christianity, Daoism, and the philosophical inquiry of Existentialism are all detached from defining happiness under such superficialit...