2.500 years ago Aristotle came to the conclusion that people yearn for happiness more than anything else. Any other achievement such as health, beauty, power or money is estimated according to the happiness that we feel when we conquer it. From Aristotle’s time until now many things have changed, but we still haven’t realized better what happiness is and how we can conquer it.

Many people waste their lives in an agonizing search for happiness, in an endless hunt for joy. They act as if happiness and joy are somewhere out there and not within us. This truth is expressed by the Ancient Greeks in the myth of Narcissus.

According to the Greek myth, Narcissus was a handsome young man who the nymph Echo fell in love with. Echo was deprived by her ability to talk by the goddess Hera and could only repeat the last syllables of the words she heard. Since she could not express her love for Narcissus, he rejected her. Echo died of a broken heart. The gods punished Narcissus for his cruel behavior by making him fall in love with his image. The soothsayer Tiresias had predicted that Narcissus would live until he saw his own image. One day, as Narcissus was bending over the quite waters of a lake, he saw his image mirrored into the water. He fell so in love with his own image that he didn’t want to leave this spot. He died out of depression and was turned into a flower, the well-known daffodils that spring up in the banks of rivers.

Narcissus fell in love with his own image after he had rejected the love of Echo. Being in love with one’s own image, becoming a narcissus, can be seen in the myth as being the punishment to the incapability to love another person.

Echo is our own voice returning to us. Each voice is the expression of a person’s inside world and not of a person’s appearance. The quality of the voice is determined by the co-ordination of the air with the inside chambers and tubes. The word “personality” expresses this idea, namely that the person can be identified by the sound that he or she is producing. According to this interpretation, Narcissus is the one who denies his inner self by emphasizing on his appearance, his image.

The emphasis on the image is cultivated in every way by the mass media and especially magazines. The majority of people spend too much time and money to pick up clothes, to do plastic surgeries, to visit institutes which are going to help them create the image that they are dreaming about.

(There is a difference between a healthy interest of a person for his or her look, which is based on the sense of the self and the movement of identity from the self to the image.)

In our culture happiness coincides with wealth and success, whereas success coincides with positive thinking. The followers of positive thinking, distort the term, and systematically deny everything which is unpleasant, which frightens or gives them a hard time. A look on the way that we face death, sickness or other serious misfortunes is enough for us to comprehend that our society does not accept these situations as being normal for human existence.

We are obliged to be happy all the time and the only acceptable course in our lives is an ascending one (with more material goods).

This attitude emerged after the industrial revolution, when people’s way of thinking definitely had to be modified in order for the new mass produced products to be bought.

Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, based on the work of his uncle about crowd psychology and in cooperation with a group of psychologists created the “consumer” (the term belongs to him). The workers had to be convinced that they had to produce every day more than the previous one. The notion of boundaries was abolished. Besides, within the new spirit, prudence was unprofitable! A superhuman model was gradually adopted, which had no fear for tomorrow and transformed every failure into triumph and broke its records in order to reach a blurry defined peak. However, this way of life is not only disastrous but also unfeasible.

No matter how many material goods we possess, how many positive thoughts come into our minds, we cannot cancel death, pain and failure…

The cynic philosopher Demetrius claimed that there is no worse luck for a person than for adversities not to come into his or her life and called a “dead sea” the life which had not suffered misfortunes.

The stoic philosopher Seneca taught that no gem can shine without friction, neither a man without difficulties.

A life of undisturbed easiness is no serenity but death calmness!

Presuppositions for a happy life

The stoic philosopher Epictetus taught that people will be happy when they do not ask for things to become what they want them to but rather when they accept them as they come. (Handbook, Chap. 8)

In Chapter 17 Epictetus writes “Remember to be an actor in a drama, as the writer of the play wants. If he wants it short, it should be short. If he wants it long, it should be long. If he wants you to play a poor man, be careful to also play him intelligently. Be careful to do the same either if you are playing the role of a limping man or the role of an emperor or even a simple man. It is up to you if you are going to play him well or not. The choice of the role belongs to somebody else, not to you.”

So happiness is an internal affair, it does not depend on the external circumstances. “Stop hopping to become something better than your best self, as it is the only thing under your control”. This is in fact what Epictetus suggests in chapter 18 of his handbook.

Marcus Aurelius (Roman emperor – follower of the Stoics) taught that we falsely think that something external has the power to upset us. In fact, between the external fact and the internal emotion is our conviction of how the world should be.

Namely how we feel about ourselves but also the happiness in life depend directly on the way that our mind filters and interprets our everyday experience (positive thought). For example, if one is diagnosed with cancer, one can either be filled with sorrow, anger and see one’s disease as punishment or failure or one can see it as an opportunity to redefine one’s life, one’s true desires.

For Epictetus, a happy life and a life of virtue are the same thing. Happiness and freedom begin when people realize what they can and cannot dominate. In our power are our opinions, our ambitions, our desires and the things that we detest. Outside our control are things such as what type of body we have, if we are going to be born inside wealth, and our position in society. Our effort to control or change the things we cannot results in making us feel miserable.

For the Stoics, professional success, wealth, power and fame are irrelevant to true happiness. The most important thing is what kind of person one wants to be. What kind of life one chooses to lead.

“First tell yourself what you want to be

and then do what you have to do”

The Stoics ask us to be conscious. Every one of us has an image, even a faint one, about what he or she would want to do before they die. Our life quality is defined by the degree that we approach this goal. If this goal remains distant, we become resentful or we quit. If it is accomplished we feel happy and content.

The problem arises when people are so attached to the thing they desire the most that they stop enjoying today. Usually people live in the past or in the future, missing the present. Epictetus advises us not to take anything for granted, not even our beloved ones, and every time we kiss them to remember that we might lose them tomorrow. (If you want your children, your wife and your friends to live eternally, then you are an idiot! Handbook, Chapter 14)

People, who meditate on death, realize that they are mortal, that life is short and that they are not going to live eternally. They make sure to live the present intensely, being grateful for everything that life has given them. They do not waste their lives complaining and postponing.

The Stoics comprehend happiness as internal calmness and peace. Calmness can be achieved by cultivating a quite indifference towards the circumstances of one’s life. This can be attained when one is not afraid to sink in negative experience and emotions examining them carefully.

We body psychotherapists are very well aware of the truth included in this admonition. Negative feelings (fear – sorrow – anger) are weakened, when they are experienced. By experiencing that things could go wrong but not as wrong as we fear, we realize that we can face them.

Seneca advises us that if our worst fear is poverty, we should not try to convince ourselves that it would never happen to us. On the contrary, we should some days feed ourselves with the worst food, dress with the worst clothes, asking ourselves “Is this the situation I am afraid of?”

For the Stoics the world looks like a giant living organism, whose organ function is interrelated. The function of one organ is dependent from the function of another organ. Thus, based on the principle of compassion, one worldly being influences another. It is therefore possible for energy from the most distant star in the sky to be transferred on the smallest thing on earth and to influence it. Consequently, nobody can pursue the highest good for his or herself without simultaneously promoting the good of others. We are citizens of the world and this entails responsibility.

As one can easily understand happiness is not an easy business. It is not a situation for weak, shy, credulous or uncertain people.

Happiness is not for the faint-hearted because it demands courage, energy, fearlessness, bravery, boldness, will-power, stubbornness, stability and most of all conscience…it demands an a d u l t self.

This article was published in the magazine “Oroskopos”, issue 6, October 2003