{"id":25,"date":"2014-10-08T18:52:07","date_gmt":"2014-10-08T18:52:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/boethius101.org\/?page_id=25"},"modified":"2014-12-12T02:13:31","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T02:13:31","slug":"if-everyone-wants-to-be-happy-why-are-so-many-people-unhappy-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/?page_id=25","title":{"rendered":"Why are we unhappy?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy is he who is able to find the fountain of goodness, and happy, too, is he who can free himself from the chains that bind him to heavy earth. (III, v, p. 103) \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

After explaining that luck is unrelated to happiness, Boethius addresses the\u00a0concept of false happiness. According to Boethius, everyone desires happiness, but\u00a0many people are unhappy because\u00a0they pursue false happiness or a only piece of true happiness.<\/p>\n

Pursuing False Happiness.\u00a0<\/strong>According to Lady Philosophy, although everyone desires happiness, many are \u201cled astray by the false ideas of the good<\/em>\u201d (III, i, p. 61). These false ideas of the good\u00a0that people often pursue, mistaking them for the true good, include wealth, status, power, fame, and pleasure. For example, people pursue wealth thinking that it will bring them self-sufficiency (which is a good thing in itself); however, often in attempting to become self-sufficient people become confused or distracted and ultimately pursue wealth instead.\u00a0Those\u00a0who have money continue to\u00a0worry about money\u00a0and often\u00a0want more. Consequently, wealth is a false happiness because despite the amount of money one has obtained, one cannot truly be self-sufficient as a result of their pursuit solely for wealth (III, i, p. 66).<\/p>\n

\u00a0Pursuing Only Part of Happiness.\u00a0<\/strong>The other mistake people often make is pursuing only a part of happiness; instead of trying to obtain happiness in its entirety, \u201cmen divide as they try, in their misguided way, to get a part of it, although in fact it has no divisible parts<\/em>\u201d (III, iii, p. 81). For example, someone who pursues only pleasure without any of the other aspects of happiness will not truly be happy. If people merely pursued pleasure or joy, they would attain joy temporarily, failing to plan ahead\u00a0and secure any of the other components of happiness. Essentially, if we pursued pleasure and joy alone, we would be nothing more than animals. People need to try to obtain happiness as a whole and not just a single component.\u00a0 Happiness,\u00a0therefore, “is not be sought in any of its individual aspects<\/em>\u201d (III, iii, p. 82).<\/p>\n

Reflection<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boethius discussion applies accurately to our own times. People\u00a0often make themselves unhappy by pursuing\u00a0things in accordance with their false ideas of\u00a0what happiness is. \u00a0For example, even someone who is truly intelligent, kind, and hardworking may be unhappy due to their misunderstanding of what true happiness is. \u00a0One example would be a student who, in choosing a college, is preoccupied with status, pursuing only Ivy League colleges. But such students are often disappointed, even when they are accepted to those schools. It makes more sense to look for a school that is a better fit for all of the student’s interests, needs, and abilities. After all,\u00a0striving to be admitted into a\u00a0good college is\u00a0an admirable goal, but status is merely a component of the college selection process.<\/p>\n

Overall, many people are unhappy because of their pursuit of the wrong things. In order to achieve happiness, one must pursue it as a whole and not confuse true happiness with other false ideas.<\/p>\n

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\"Creative<\/a>This work is licensed under a\u00a0Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License\u00a0<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Happy is he who is able to find the fountain of goodness, and happy, too, is he who can free himself from the chains that bind him to heavy earth. (III, v, p. 103) \u00a0 After explaining that luck is unrelated to happiness, Boethius addresses the\u00a0concept of false happiness. According to Boethius, everyone desires happiness, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry","no-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198,"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/25\/revisions\/198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boethius101.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}