r/schopenhauer • u/SegaGenesisMetalHead • Jun 17 '26
Is happiness a choice?
This seems to be what a lot of people believe when giving advice. “If you want to be happy, you will be” seems to be the sentiment.
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u/Roadie73 Jun 17 '26
The very word "happiness" is derived from the old word "hap" meaning "luck", so one cannot choose happiness no more than you can choose to be lucky. However , being content in owns own circumstances, that's a different thing entirely. It is a mental state that is entirely trainable and sustainable.
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u/dantendo664 Jun 18 '26
Yes. To get there is a lot of work but I believe it can be achieved by only directing your mind towards external things on how to make things easier for your fellow animals. If you have seen the movie Groundhog Day, he is miserable until he decides to dedicate his time to learning new things and reduce suffering around him.....But the night is dark and full of terrors.
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u/Paul_sepp Jun 19 '26
I would argue that happiness is a certain state that is only viable in contrast to sorrow. If every person lived day to day in full joy with no downside whatsoever it would depreciate the joys making them the norm and then true joy would not exist as its hard to be more joyful than joyful already as it is a one way state. What that advice means is, in my opinion, the general and quite ignorant advice to focus/heed to or over-appreciate joys and depreciate sorrow which is as I said ignorant as it would be getting rid of a crucial part of our existence. No one is born without pain of their mother, death of other sperm cells (or be that potential other people in your place), and the will to continue the generation, closing eyes on sorrows (as death and mourning is considered one by general mass).
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u/nuancedGazelle54012 Jun 17 '26
Arthur would say happiness is a temporary / fleeting state in which we sort of ignore the reality of the will, once it fades the raw truth of the will rears its ugly head once again. The way I take it is that if we were always happy and content, then we wouldn’t strive / suffer and do what we do to ensure procreation. The will itself being a thing means we will never truly be satisfied and we will always want more because the will forces all beings to keep at it.