For centuries, there has always been a thought like ‘ignorance is bliss.’ Lord Byron and lots of other thinkers said that “The worst side of being an intellectual person is the unhappiness that comes with wisdom. And if a person is happy in this life, it is because this person knows nothing about life and cannot understand the truth.”
The idea that a person cannot be both intellectual and happy is a really common thing to think nowadays. But on the other hand, there are lots of people that think people should be happy no matter what and don’t have the right to be sad even once. These people are the toxic positive persons. I don’t agree with both sides on this topic. I think that happiness is a period that you pass through when you are becoming a wisely happy person from an ignorantly happy person.
I believe that even though happiness is a really important topic that humanity has been questioning for more than thousands of years, we still don’t know how to be happy. And you can easily see so many people that are unhappy. That’s why we need to change the way that people perceive happiness. Of course, you can say that you are talking about changing what people think of happiness when people literally just try to keep being alive in this hard life. But this is the exact opinion I will try to change. Probably when we think of happiness, almost all of us first think like “If I had this and that, I would be happy.” But for me, this is a totally wrong way to think. Because what I call true happiness is about being happy regardless of life conditions—or perhaps more accurately, despite existing conditions. For me, happiness is seeing the beauty in things no matter how things go, and being able to control your own emotional state when things get so difficult that you cannot see the beauty, with the awareness that this is just a process.
Now you can ask, “But how?” In this position, I think it is good to look at what stoics say about happiness and wisdom. The Stoics say we should focus on what is in our own hands. At the end of the day, what we need to do is to focus on our own choices, not waste time on things that are beyond our control.
Of course, when I talk about happiness like this, I am not saying that you should adapt to wherever life throws you and don’t worry. In fact, the point is not to be okay no matter what you go through, but to provide the motivation to continue your efforts in this life.
In essence, the age-old debate between ignorance making people happy or unhappy; I believe that true happiness is the ability to find beauty in challenges and maintain emotional control, understanding difficulties as temporary processes. Focusing on what’s within our control and trying to improve ourselves no matter what are the things that need to be the things that make us happy. Happiness, in fact, is not ignorance; it is wisdom.
