MY PHILOSOPHY OF A HAPPY LIFE

 

Life on earth seems to be held in the grip of the hands of a vicious circle, from birth to death, from good to bad, from day to night, from happy to sad; it is an intricate network of the struggles that life offers. It is one of the laws of nature, one of those that can be avoided but cannot ultimately be broken. The beauty lies in appreciating that in the darkness of the gutters of life, a brighter day awaits; followed by another darker day.

Life is a beautiful experience, it is however not meant to be driven in the slow speed of life that happiness often seems to present. It is designed to be full of the surprises of life, so that when the curtain finally falls; when we breathe our last and cast our eyes on the unknown, we can say that we stood for something, that we were fulfilled and that we laid a mark in the foundations of the human civilization.

Philosophy is an interesting field of study; it confronts what we already know and makes it strange by breathing new life into the human mind. It allows confession of what we cannot see and inspires the mind into creativity. It allows the mind to hold dialogues, to draw mental experiments and to see things as they are. The exposure to philosophy is like virginity, once it is learnt, it cannot be unlearned, but it offers the greatest forms of the perversions of knowledge that men crave. It would be accurate to say that it unsettles the mind and provokes new ways of seeing things.

Men have the projection of God in themselves; they crave for the infinite, the very absolutes and the very perfect of everything. This means that we are caught in the mental vicious circle of desire. It somehow feels like happiness is dangled right in front of your face; the further you reach for it, the further it moves away from you. This creates the feeling that human beings hold onto life and happiness in a passionate cling of memories of what we human beings have come to call love, happiness and control. We crave the three; to be the authors of our own destiny and to make the gods bow to our will. This is why we feel the need to learn more and more, in the hope that we will escape the illusion of life.

Life is really an illusion, we are trained to think that we are in control over everything, our emotions and our bodies, because we are free to move and think. Even I feel that way, but take a step back and think about it; how much control do you really have over nature? Do you have control over the mechanism that operates the back of your eyes or the beating of your heart?  Can you ultimately decide to hold your breath forever?

Some aspects of life are beyond our control, they cannot be controlled; problems will always hover over happiness; people will always die and the rain will always wash this pain away, and a brighter day will always be born. This is the balance that nature provides. The basis of my happiness is in the appreciation of life as being larger than death. It is in the knowing of just how large the universe really is and the appreciation of the various possibilities that lie out there; between galaxies and the stars. There is something very liberating about having the infinite freedom of thought, to visit such extremity of creation and to know what mankind’s place is in the working mechanisms of the universe and a step closer to understanding Gods nature. By having such perspectives, I am able to see my problems for what they are, trivial. This guarantees a balanced judgment on a proper course of action against my problems.

~Antony Mwangi.