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 superficialities. What the individual must then realize is that he is in control of his happiness, for the reverse leads to the loss of all control of man’s being becoming definite by the mere acknowledgment that his own sense of happiness is not under his own accord; any person’s individuality utterly dies in consequence of such vapid definitions of happiness; all forms of suffering pales in comparison to the individual’s control of his sense of meaning.

Great intellectuals have promulgated the thought that people should not derive their individual happiness upon the external, upon that which is impermanent; for nothing above the Earth is guaranteed, and for the individual to hang his happiness on it loses that which he hung upon the uncertain. When man fills his void with exterior factors, he edifies his demise through the pursuit of hedonistic pleasures—claims precisely made by Burkeman. From Burkeman’s book, “The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking,” comes the notion that the forwarding of any person into his own self-deception of pure positive thoughts strips him of the fulfillment of finding joy within his own self. If the constitution of individual happiness happens to be derived from extrinsic factors—more specifically, the positive feeling instantiated by “positive thinking” or “positive outcome”—then does such a man not acknowledge that his own sense of meaning is not within his own grasp, but rather conditional (Burkeman, O. The Antidote: Happiness For People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking)? What Burkeman suggests is a more controlled, more Stoic form of thinking: putting all forms of control upon one’s self, upon those which only the individual is in pure control of, ultimately leading to the embrace of the uncertain.

Realizing man’s innate sense of belonging mitigates against pure solitude and loneliness, but to not delineate between social harmony and social dependence causes people to become mere numbers, codes, causing the suicide of their individuality. “Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture oft lie eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs...Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness; but must explore if it be goodness” (Emerson, R.W. Self Reliance). When the individual stems his happiness from without, he enacts virtues in the name of social conformity, neither due to its godliness nor its benevolent spirit, not giving virtue its due diligence but rather conforming either out of fear or comfort; through such skin-deep legislations of happiness does a man kill his own self in exchange of becoming a code, a sheep fit to herd.

It must then be realized that the individual’s sense of purpose and joy must come from within; to those strong enough to look evil in its purest form, to take on the burden of Being itself, both the journals of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold (the Columbine shooters) and “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and a holocaust survivor, present themselves as such; for only he who faces the strongest of storms has the capacity to fully enjoy the warmth of the sun. It can be derived from the journal entries of both Eric and Dylan, as well as from Frankl’s book, that men and women are immensely in control of their thoughts; whether or not such ponderings are malevolent or pure good is utterly up to the individual. From the writings of Eric and Dylan come the perception of two children, consciously brooding away in resentment; spending month after month pondering upon nothing but the malevolent judgment of life, the state of Being, God Himself. Frankl, on the other hand, writes in “Man’s Search for Meaning” his realization within the time he spent in the camps: “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation” (Frankl, V. Man’s Search for Meaning). The literary masterpiece lays out the idea that despite staring in the face of pure evil, man is still capable of finding God, of appreciating art, of reminiscing the times spent with loved ones, of conjuring humor—still capable of being in control of his happiness, a meaning that pales in comparison to the tragedies of Being.

If the solution to despair and the moving of man towards happiness and purpose must not stem from the exterior—for the external is filled with uncertainties and the tragedies of life—then he must find it from within. For when the individual has ideally cultivated the “self” and puts all control upon those which is only constituted by himself, the volatilities of Being does no harm to him nor quakes the ground where his meaning lies; the pursuit of the self ultimately leads to the acceptance of uncertainties. If any man designates all consciousness only to factors which solely he can constitute and control, what then does the outside world have against such a man? The notion that the individual must find the sense of happiness and meaning from the outside forgets the edification of the inner being; for he who cultivates his happiness from without has completely rejected the sovereignty of the man within. What all of this necessitates humanity to come into realization with, is to gradually deviate away from the endless chase of external nooses and to gravitate back towards taking control of happiness for the inner-self; that which is his natural inclination.