Philosophy

    Happiness explored . . .

     Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know !    Ernest Hemingway

Money can’t buy happiness, but if I need to cry, I’d prefer to do so while sitting in a Ferrari !  Clare Booth Luce

Happy are those whose way is blameless  Psalm 119

Happiness sneaks in through a door you didn’t know you’d left open !  John Barrymore

Some cause happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go !  Oscar Wilde

Some people walk in the rain, others just get wet !  Roger Miller

Happiness is good health and a poor memory !  Albert Schweitzer

Happiness is a strange notion. I am just not made for it.  It has never been a goal of mine. I do not think in those terms.  Werner Herzog

Happiness is cuddling up on the sofa, watching something recorded.  Kay Curram  age 9

So . . "What is the meaning of life" ? ? ?

A taxi driver once had Bertrand Russell in his cab . . he being the most famous philosopher of his day.  Seizing the opportunity, the Cabbie asked him, “So what’s it all about?” 

No answer was forthcoming which is no surprise, for isn't the ‘meaning of life’  the most  profound and elusive mystery of them all, unanswerable by even the greatest of minds ?  So . . is there no answer to be had ?  Perhaps we can progress to an answer by considering what makes life worth living . . . the winning of a personal struggle . . .  the Jupiter symphony . . .  the infinite variety in nature . . . the works of Goya or Cezanne . . . that seafood restaurant . . . that abiding friendship . . . a special child’s face . . . the love of and from another . . . eliminating suffering . . . nurturing a well founded child ?

Surely a huge variety there, complicated by the very unpredictable nature of it all . . but maybe we can come to a basic answer, perhaps too simplistic and surely missing much  . . but perhaps only so because we expect something much more elaborate . . . but here goes . . .

The only sense that we can make of the idea that life has meaning is that there are some reasons to live, rather than to die, and those reasons are to be found in the living of life itself !  Thanks to Julian

Julian Baggini.