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Happiness is a way of being

Posted November. 19, 2018 07:37,   

Updated November. 19, 2018 07:37

한국어

“What is best about our lives - the moments when we are, as we would put it, at our happiest - is both pleasant and deeply unpleasant. Happiness is not a feeling; it is a way of being. If we focus on the feelings, we will miss the point.” ― Mark Rowlands, “The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness”

The author, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, has a secretive memory that he lived with the wolf "Brenin." When living with human beings, Brenin well understands his dual tasks of maintaining own inherent instinct as a wolf, and having to learn the image of a dog as a way to survive. Living together with the human means the wolf has to live a fake daily life. Living as a dog is a fake for the wolf in the first place. Perhaps the process of socialization and civilization to humans would be time and process in which the human starts with innocent instinct, and learn lies and tactics with the aim of developing social capability to survive. To the wolf that is accustomed the rules of the wild, the socialization process is also a task that it should master without fail by overcoming hardships. However, just like the wolf instinctively chases a rabbit, the human also sometimes behaves based on his or her own instinct that has been suppressed.

For the wolf to catch a rabbit is a task that is more important than several research papers that I, as a social science researcher, have to complete by year’s end. I hope that my thesis that have been finalized after overcoming many unexpected challenges will be approved by three anonymous reviewers before being published in journals, and that reports that have been prepared for months will be seamlessly finalized and accepted by the funders. However, such desires have a meaning to me, irrespective of the outcome of whether they are successes or failures. Intrinsically, success and failure are the outcome and post-event results. Happiness is already generated beforehand.

Everyone wants to be happy. Happiness is a lofty value that humans should ultimately achieve. Happiness is existence itself and a way of living. These phrases tell us that we can gain the most important thing in the most difficult time in life. Only the most difficult time is the most valuable moment. Difficult times await you while happiness always awaits you as well.