Bertrand Russel is quoted to have once said this: “To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.” Although I struggled to understand what it meant, I finally understood it. Bertrand Russel was saying that the pursuit of happiness is equally or even more important than the attainment of it.
As all great statements go, this one is no different. It makes you wonder, whether or not this statement is actually true or not. After giving it some thought, I decided that it wasn’t true, and would shorten the road for anybody that would like to come to a conclusion on this issue.
It is in my opinion that Bertrand Russel is wrong, and that the statement therefore is also incorrect. The rest of this essay is going to go and show you what exactly brings us the most amount of happiness.
First of all, what is happiness? If we can’t define it, how can we prove which one is the correct one? Happiness is a state of being. It can be expressed in a wide variety of physical gestures. From crying, to laughing, to smiling, or in-articulate gesticulations, it’s a very difficult topic to discuss.
To a scientist, happiness is a little different. Happiness to a scientist is just an increase in certain hormones and a distinct series of neural activity. Philosophers think of it as living a good life and flourishing mentally or spiritually.
Happiness is also closely related with love, which is a feeling of strong attachment and devotion between two or more people. Scientists will also once again say that it’s a series of hormones and neural activity, but the philosophers and pious people look at it as a celebration of life, as something a lot more beautiful than just the scientific definition.
Now that we have that out of the way, let’s delve down to what actually makes as happier, the attainment of our desires or the pursuit of the said desires? Well, I’m going to prove to you that it’s the latter, and not the former, through a series of examples, and explanations.
The first question I’m going to pose is: “does anyone like school?” The answer should be an immediate “no,” except for the few people that like to be bored and stare at numbers and letters. With that out of the way, let me show you a personal example of how the attainment of our desires considerably outweighs that of pursuing our desires.
The first example that I’m going to give to you guys is the first year that I spend being homeschooled. Although this might not seem to have anything to correlate with happiness, it really does. You see, when I started my fourth grade year, I had a choice. If I were to finish the math textbook that I had before Christmas, my parent’s would buy me an Xbox One.
This was the first year that it was going to be out, and I was pumped. Growing up in rather poor surroundings, I was limited to free online games, and was always envious of my friends who had consoles and could play games that I could never dream of, like Lego Star Wars III (this was when I was 10, so cut me some slack) and Halo Reach.
I studied incredibly hard, and yes, I finished the math textbook about a week from Christmas, successfully completing my part of the bargain, and getting my Xbox. Needless to say, I was incredibly happy.
But what was more fun and exciting, studying day-in, day-out, doing sometimes two lessons of math a day, or waking up on Christmas to find a giant box underneath the Christmas tree? It shouldn’t be too hard to realize that I sure as heck was happier to have the Xbox instead of studying the whole year.
The next thing that I’m going to ask you is do you like to work or to get? Of course, being the lazy humans that we are, we always enjoy the things that help us save labor and energy. Just take a look at every invention that’s existed. Ships (way easier than swimming across the Atlantic), cars, planes, trains, robots, and the list goes virtually forever.
So it should come to no surprise that we like receiving gifts and services much more than if we had to work for them. But this raises the question, when are we happier, after we worked hard or after we got?
The answer to this question is the same. When we get! If you worked hard, you still like to get that object you were seeking over your work. You’ll just cherish that object all the more, instead of losing interest in it incredibly quickly.
So in summation, Bertrand Russel was wrong when he said that the process of attaining your goal gives us more pleasure and satisfaction than the attainment of them. I hope that this essay has convinced one to think about it similarly. After all, that is the truth.
The Blogger 
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