The Importance of the past

If someone asks you, “When was the last time you were happy?”, what would you say? Most would reach for the defensive cliché and say something like, “Well, I’m happy right now.” But that wouldn’t be true would it? It’s quite impossible to be happy right now, if you’re alive.

The very fact that you are alive suggests that you have some need to fulfill. The very fact that you have some need to fulfill contradicts the word happy, which to me is synonymous to fulfilled.

So I toy with the idea that happiness is not something of the present, for living beings. It is retrospective. We can say, when we fulfilled something in the past, it made us happy.

But to say we are happy right now, is to claim fulfillment and therefore, death. Yes death, because to want oxygen in your lungs is a state of unfulfillment isn’t it?

The very moment after any fulfilment brings about the need for some other fulfilment. The act of succeeding at one thing is enough to instil the desire to succeed at something else. By our very nature, the present is an unhappy time.

It is clear to me that the past is where we can fondly observe happiness. To remember the moments of fulfilment.

This perspective can bring about a certain level of contentment with the unhappy position of the present though, can’t it? We can say, for example, “I am not happy, but i remember happiness fondly, and that makes me contented.”

SO, (off the wagon moment!), maybe the quest is not for happiness, but for contentment! A state of mind in which we believe that we are serving the past faithfully.

It seems to me that we should carefully plan our objectives in life. This is to ensure that we have milestones to mark our happiness. Without these, we forget that we have in fact fulfilled in the past, and we lose that sense of contentment with the present.

When is the last time I was happy? less that a minute ago, after this concept entered my mind and I fulfilled the need to write this blog. And now? I’m contented with that achievement.

But already the feeling is fading, and my mind seeks the next quest.