In my almost twenty years, I’ve lived a life worth perhaps… almost twenty years. At times I’ve felt it’s more, that I’ve acquired wisdom beyond my age, but that was of course self-serving baloney fed from a perspective of much too much self-reflection. But in the midst of vanity or not, I’ve pieced together opinions throughout life, as anyone does, and whilst these opinions shift and change and reshuffle, as anyone’s does, there’s always one underlying core in which they revolve around. My philosophy.
Happiness is all that matters.
It sounds terribly basic, doesn’t it? And yet, we surround ourselves with things that make us unhappy. You have to be careful with the specifics of course, because there’s some things which make us unhappy which we must do as adults. Other times it’s not as simple as “just being happy”, such as with mental illnesses or situationary matters. These are all problems which get weighed on by opinions which revolve and evolve through the currents of time.
But the core stays the same.
I’m not referring merely to one’s own happiness, but the happiness of every living person. If you can make someone else happy, do it. Words and gestures usually do that pretty well. Do not concern yourself too much with making other people happy if it’s at the detriment of your own wellbeing.
Again, this train of thought evolves and becomes finer grains of thinking, opinions and such. It’s probably easier if we focus on the second half of the philosophy, which is to do with hatred. Avoid and abolish hatred whenever possible. In situations in which hatred devours all reason, forces your hand in matters which are absolutely unacceptable and inexcusable… well, this is when the removal of hatred is at its most important.
Hatred starts wars. It justifies death, and it poisons hope. It is the removal of all reason which we have all fallen prey to at some point in our lives, I’m sure. Little hatreds. Simply insulting someone is a reflection of reactionary hatred. Hating person A at the detriment of the happiness of person B. Petty hatred. Passive aggressive hatred.
Just fuckin’ stop, eh?
As always, there’s finer print, like justice and taboo acts and so on and so forth. But hatred leads to a death penalty, whereas level-thinking imprisons that person for the rest of their life. And if hatred continues to rule the world, then what kind of place will the world become? It’ll become an endless cycle of torment and revenge and one-sided self-justified slaughter.
Another way of putting this philosophy is to just be nice and don’t be shit. And if something happens which causes a flare of hatred in you, the best you can do is approach it with a level head and deal with the situation as appropriately as possible.
And think before you condemn this as whimsical. Is it really so difficult?
Perpetually Perturbed 