A colleague and friend laughed at me on WhatsApp because I’ve congratulated her twice. Wishing her happiness—the most beautiful thing in the world for her: peace and health. But I’ve congratulated so many people in person and on social media that, without realizing it, I congratulated her again.
This is the first time this has happened to me, but everyone knows there’s a first time for everything. The truth is, there’s no magic formula for achieving happiness. Nor do we know the secret to achieving it quickly.
But what is happiness? According to various philosophical schools of thought, happiness is linked to being more than having. The concept is not unrelated to humanity and the experience of life.
Aristotle, one of the most prominent Greek thinkers, said that happiness is a universal goal of human beings. He said this motivation is present in everyone’s heart and transcends each person’s differences and circumstances.
Plato, another Greek philosopher, said that whoever makes everything that leads to happiness depend on themselves. And not on others, has adopted the best plan for living happily.
For his part, the Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher Viktor Frankl said that true human fulfillment begins with the development of the search for meaning as significance. Which each person must explore from their perception of their reality.
Sometimes we think that having money is happiness, and then suddenly we read a news story about a millionaire who commits suicide after losing millions of dollars in the stock market. We confirm that financial fortune only provides financial security, but it isn’t everything.
If we learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic, it was that health is more important than all material things in this life. We realize this when we gather for Sunday lunch with grandparents or friends. We understand that being surrounded by people who love us and care about us is one of life’s greatest treasures. But what have great thinkers said about happiness?
For Siddharta Gautama (Buddha), “there is no path to happiness, happiness is the path.” For Aristotle, however, “Happiness depends on ourselves.”
The philosopher Seneca said: “The great blessings of humanity are within us and within our reach. The wise man connects with his lot, whatever it may be, without desiring what he does not have.”
“If you are depressed, you are living in the past. If you are anxious, you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present,” argued Lao Tzu.
For Kant, “Happiness, more than a desire, joy, or choice, is a duty.” Bertrand Russell concluded: “Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most deadly to true happiness.”
“Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and gently land on your shoulder,” the American philosopher Henry David Thoreau declared.
Someone said that happiness was hidden inside us so that no one would find it when they looked for it, and they were quite right, because we look for it abroad when we want to emigrate to a richer country than our own. When we want to enjoy pleasures that are unattainable due to their economic cost. And finally we don’t know that happiness is enjoyed when we are healthy and peaceful, and that it is in our inner soul, where it was truly “hidden” from us.
- Hidden Happiness - 24 de July de 2025
- The Intelligent Man: Builder of More Stable Relationships - 22 de July de 2025
- The Chevalier of Paris, the most famous beggar - 22 de July de 2025