How to make ourselves worthy of happiness?

Man is an animal first, then a man. He is an advanced animal with intelligence, creativity and aesthetic. A nation that suppresses natural needs is mentally ill. And mental patients cannot achieve perfection in economic, political, social and scientific development. To become a complete human being, it is very important to keep society open and give freedom, prosperity and happiness to man. Our terrible tragedy is that we are neither among animals nor among humans. If the factors of freedom, progress, happiness and prosperity are removed from the life of humans, then this life becomes worse than animals.

In our society, the expression of joyous instincts of ordinary human beings is considered to be an abominable act. A peacock can dance in the forest, birds can chirp, the waterfall can make noise, tree branches may sway, but common people cannot be happy. In our society, only elite class can be happy; ordinary people cannot even think of beauty, joys, pleasure and prosperity. Such hypocrisy and suffocation cannot be found in any other society the world over. That is why common people in our society welcome suffering and seem to enjoy sadness.

On receiving the Nobel Prize, William Faulkner said in his speech that “this award is given not to me, but to my work.” In his novel, The Sound and the Fury, he depicts a dying civilisation and shattered families. He took the title of this novel from a famous stanza of Shakespeare’s play Macbeth: “Life is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.” The story of this novel is the story of a family that gradually moves from prosperity to decline. A family whose characters are embraced in the memories of their past and on the other hand, they are busy spoiling their own honour. Although this novel is a tragedy of a family, in this story an entire era is dying by rubbing its heels. When you read this novel, you will feel that you are reading the story of the Pakistani society. Every human being in the Pakistani society is dying bit by bit over the years. Now in our society there are less people and more corpses. Such corpses whose hearts and minds are dead, with no existence of anything called feelings and emotions.

In his poem, I sit and look out, Walt Whitman writes: “I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I see in low life the mother misused by her children, dying, neglected, gaunt, desperate, I see the wife misused by her husband, I see the treacherous seducer of young women, I mark the rankling of jealousy and unrequited love attempted to be hid, I see these sights on the earth, I see the workings of battle, pestilence, tyranny, I see martyrs and prisoners, I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots and prisoners, I observe a famine at sea, I observe the sailors casting lots who shall be killed to preserve the lives of the rest, I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; all these — all the meanness and agony without end I sitting look out upon, see hear, and am silent.”

Ancient thinkers say that the pursuit of happiness is always reverse. That is, the more you run to find them, the more you will go away from them. Selfishness does not bring true happiness; people who always think about themselves cannot be said to possess happiness. Happiness is the name of living to reason, adherence to truth and especially human love.

In his book, The Story of My Life, Helen Keller writes: “Most people are wrong about true happiness. It comes not from personal gratification, but as a result of persistent action toward a worthwhile goal.” According to Immanuel Kant, “Ethics is not the name of how we should please ourselves. Rather, it is the name of how we can make ourselves worthy of happiness”. If only these truths were understood by our elite class, they would not be living a vain and nonsense life at all.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 21^st, 2023.

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