Happiness and despair, complementary pairs
Much has been written about happiness in recent times. While I am a fan of being happy, why place the search for happiness at the centre of our existence?
For one to know true happiness, one must also know the depths of despair. Yet we avoid despair, and when we are in despair, we see ourselves as if we have a nasty disease.
Yet it is through the lens of sadness and despair that we find compassion, and compassion is one of the greatest of all human emotions. It is also the portal to beauty and love.
It seems that the forever quest for happiness is one of the addictions of our modern world. We always want more; there is never enough. Add the scarcity of happiness to our long list of what we experience as scarce in a world that propagates scarcity as a currency on which the few thrive while others, under the spell of scarcity, suffer.
What would happen in your life if you gave up the quest for happiness and just lived it all? Ride the roller coaster of love, happiness, heartache, heartbreak, joy, anger, frustration, care?
What would happen if you experienced all emotions as equally valid, neither good nor bad?
Are we really here on earth to pursue happiness? Or do we have a very different role to play?
Is the pursuit of happiness just another expression of our wallowing in narcissism?
From the words of the mystics…
Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and other says, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable. Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep on your bed. The Prophet, Kahlil Gibran
Written July 3rd, 2012
Photo Taken January 28th, 2023, Article published January 28th 2026
