Reason For Life

We are born, we live and then we die. That is the nature and pattern of all living things. Our life is not a practice or a dress rehearsal - this is the real thing! Yet every day we engage in what can seem like an unending struggle, alerting us to the inescapable realisation that something is missing in our lives. What is that something? That something is happiness, it's what we all seek; it is our reason for existence; its loss, our greatest sorrow.

Fight or flight seems to be our stock response to many of our everyday life situations, creating tension and stress and making each day a struggle, if not for material survival, then certainly to feel at home with ourselves, with our neighbours, and with our environment. Denial, blame and absorption in endless consumption and distractions do not assuage the pervasive sense of unsatisfactoriness that we can all feel from time to time. We all want to find happiness in our lives. We search, and if we find it, it’s often a fleeting, transient phenomenon – nothing seems to last for long.

Perhaps we need to change our approach in our search for that which can be so elusive. There are many forms of self-cultivation that encourage self-realisation; cults and therapeutic regimes and systems abound to cater for our numerous neuroses. There are many prescriptions for attaining that which we lack - so we are informed. Are we really so bereft of resources? George Bernard Shaw, commenting on the subject of happiness had this to say:

"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it."

We can change focus, shift the emphasis, and concentrate on the production of happiness rather than its consumption. If we find that we have some, then give it away! In this way there will be no shortage. It is after all the reason for life.