The pursuit of happiness

Does God want us to be happy? The short, quick, and obvious answer is yes. Of course He wants us to be happy. Yet the next question is on us. What should make us happy?

We rarely ask and even more rarely answer that question honestly. We need to ask ourselves what ought to make us happy, and answer accordingly. Indeed we need to ask ourselves what exactly we mean by happiness first. I've been very happy lately with my golf game. But it is a fleeting, vain happiness, if I am to be honest with myself. In fact, it's downright shallow.

Socrates, that old pagan, famously opined that the unexamined life is not worth living. Aristotle taught that happiness is the highest goal, and that the greatest happiness comes from examination of the greatest things. Aquinas expanded on that further by saying that the greatest happiness comes from thinking about God. And I think I'll leave it at that.

Question thyself

Be proud of yourself. Be satisfied with yourself. Be happy with who you are. Be you, despite what other people think of you. I hear those vapid platitudes so much that I want to scream. I want to ask, I want to yell at the top of my lungs, 'But what if you're an asshole?'

It is shallow thought my friends. No one, and I mean no one, is justified in what they do only because of who they may think they are. The unexamined life, it is said, is not worth living. And it is not. If I must question myself, and I most certainly must, then why not must you question you?

Answer that question to my debit, and I might allow that your chosen lifestyle may be valid. Yet so long as you direct that question only at me, then I am playing fair to point out that you are merely selfish. And that is not fair to conservatives like me.

Words Have Meaning

We live by definition. Many folks will disagree with that, and it's interesting to wonder whether all they're doing is living under a different definition. It would seem so, despite the fact that, very often, they attempt to live a banner of no definition.

What purpose can that serve? For starters, all it really does it put them into the category of relativists. All kinds of fun can be had with factoid, but we'll set aside for now. There's a more ominous idea at work under the auspices of no definition. If people cannot be defined, then no human action can be called wrong as there would be no definition to fit it.

That's why so many folks now believe that marriage can be between any two people who love each other. It takes away from marriage by making the term meaningless, that is, without definition. It throws the point into the realm of love, whatever that means, as it is also a term used rather loosely these days. How many of us actually consider what love might be, or what it actually might demand of us? Very few, because it is now a term used merely to justify what we want to do and with whoever wants to do it with us.

Words mean things. At least, they're supposed to. They're the only way in which we can effectively communicate, and they can only be effective when we define them. This is hardly a new concept. The ancient Greeks insisted that we must define our terms before discussing matters; more recently, Rush Limbaugh opined that, well, words mean things. If we are truly serious about understanding other people and other cultures then we have to be able to understand what is being said by ourselves and others. If we are really serious about ending war and injustice or merely making our local community a better place, then we must admit that our words must be well defined in manners comprehensible and acceptable to all rational people.

If we do not do this, then we are simply banging a gong when we speak. Such is nothing more than a metallic din which can only drown out those who really want a better world.