The Happy Life

The Happy Life
The search for contentment in the modern world – David Malouf

Malouf explores the concept of happiness throughout history. From early times to the writing of the Declaration of Independence to the pursuit of happiness in the 21st century, with all the pretense of attaining perfection and busyness of modern life.
The twenty first century pulse ‘…..endlessly pushing for the new, the more;’
Malouf espouses about humans being conditioned to being in a state of unrest. Curious and searching.
‘….restlessness is the source of all that is productive in our lives and is to this extent good, but in its negative sense it can be a source of anxiety that is deeply injurious.’
He describes man being both the happy child of progress, of the will to knowledge and power, and its endlessly unresting slave.
The concept of unrest seems to be the more you have, the more you desire more.
Consequently you are a slave to that desire for more.
Never satisfied, never ‘happy’.
Malouf explores the concept of living within defined limits and being able to feel completeness in this as being happy – even in the cruelest of conditions.
The perception of being isolated from the world leads to unhappiness as Malouf relates that there is a feeling expressed of being unknown, insignificant, worthless.
‘’What alarms us in our contemporary world, what unsettles and scares us, is the extent to which the forces that shape our lives are no longer personal – they no nothing of us; and to the extent that we know nothing of them – cannot put a face to them in anything we recognize as human – we cannot deal with them. We feel like small powerless creatures in the coils of an invisible monster, vast but insubstantial, that cannot be grasped or wrestled with.’
Malouf tackles this topic as an academic exercise concluding that it is best to try to live day by day. To ‘make do’ with a kind of happiness. I.e. don’t aim too high and it might be achievable. Setting limits to make a happy life achievable.
Is this the sound of reason and measured thinking of a mature individual, done with taking chances in life.
Is not happiness best found when you least expect it?