Happiness

I've enrolled in a very interesting and thought provoking elective this academic quarter called "Reinventing through intrapreneurial/entrepreneurial leadership" by Prof.DVR Seshadri. With six sessions having gone past, this elective has been feeding lot of food for thought, exploring many facets of life. I'm currently pondering over life's biggest and toughest questions which we safely keep aside due to fear of facing uncomfortable questions from our subconscious mind. As part of the course requirements, we have been asked to view a set of videos depicting the views of different philosophers on happiness, hardship, love, self esteem etc. One such interesting video is about Epicurus views on happiness. I found his ideas to be simple and yet very much profound that everyone can easily relate to.

Many of our daily ambitions are linked to being happy. But we don't really set a plan to accomplish this goal on a daily basis. We search for happiness in worldly possessions and perceptions in the viewpoint of others. They could provide momentary happiness but they don't seem to last forever.

Epicurus suggests that happiness is directly linked to freedom, friends and an analyzed life. When I look back at times when I was unhappy, the moments can easily be traced to either lack of freedom, friends or an analyzed life. It is startling to me with this discovery. When our Professor asked us about what makes us happy, we gave a bunch of answers which he was able to fit within these three parameters. All of them are equally important and therefore our quest should address achieving all of them in certain proportions.

Though I haven't read much of philosophy, this course seems to give a glimpse of many ideas and thoughts which will provide guiding directions in my life's journey.