The Pursuit of Happiness

Recently, I re-watched the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness, (2006)which stars Will Smith and tells the inspirational story of Christopher Gardner. It was an excellent movie in terms of being diligent and persistent with obtaining the things that you want for your life. I really admired Chris’ determination to not quit and give up on what he wanted to achieve, even if it meant maintaining, while the one he loved walked out on him  (by the way, she did come back).

There was a statement made in the movie that rang very loudly in my ears. That statement was, “It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and  the part about our right to life, liberty, and
  only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?”
And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue as oppose to possess.

This statement started me to thinking about some things and asking some questions like: How do we define our own state of happiness? Do we ever stop pursuing it? Do we ever seize it and hold on for dear life?

First let’s define what “pursuit of happiness” means.

Pursuit - an act of chasing something in an effort to overtake it or to capture it.

Happiness - a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy.

So the pursuit of happiness is chasing after a state of contentment, satisfaction, love and pleasure. Is happiness a temporary feeling, which only last for a moment, before the pursuit has to begin again? Or do we consistently live in a state of happiness? Why did Thomas Jefferson say the ‘pursuit of happiness” instead of our right to life, liberty and happiness? Is it because, we will always find the need for something else to make us happy; new dreams to pursue; new goals to reach; new relationships to meet our needs? Is it because, just when we think that we’ve reached that place of happiness, something comes along (albeit temporarily) to snatch it away from us again; our finances are out of whack, our children are acting like they’ve lost their minds, our parents are like aliens who are speaking a language that we dont understand, our significant others are Dr. Jekyll and Mr/Mrs. Hyde; our bosses act like the demons from hell or our coworker is about to make us lose control? Then there goes our happiness snatched away like a thief in the night and then we find ourselves in pursuit of it all over again.

For the most part, most of us can say that we have a reached a place of contentment, joy and satisfaction in our lives. But can we say that we are 100 percent happy in EVERY area of our lives including our careers or jobs, education, social life, relationships with God, yourself, significant others (singles wanting to be married, married wanting to be single)? Are your children behaving the way they were raised and trained? Is your health as it should be, including your weight and ailments? Is your financial house where you want for it to be (no debt, savings, retirement, homeownership, etc)? And there are countless other areas to consider, just think about it. Can you honestly say that you are 100 percent satisfied with the state of all of these things? Is the pursuit over or do you feel that things can be better, that there is room for improvement?

I know that I cannot say that I am completely satisfied and I won’t even try to fake it. There are a couple of areas where I know there is room for improvement, before I can say that I am truly happy about it. So the pursuit continues. But every now and then, I take that pursuit as a grain of salt; sprinkle it on what I have going on now to add some flavor to it. Then I savor the moment to just be happy.

Can you say that you are 100 percent happy for sure?


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