The Pursuit of Happiness

One of my all time favorite movies is 'The Pursuit of Happyness' starring Will Smith. But as the spelling for happiness indicates in the subject, this is not about the movie and is yet another philosophical crap resulting from a few hours of glare at the roof of my bedroom. Hope it doesn't get too heavy for you...

As the movie states happiness is something pursued and not something that is existing. A beggar gets happy if he gets some food to live on, while a millionaire (and a software engineer too) hardly cares about timely food. The situation is the same but the context is different and one is immensely happy about it while the other hardly considers it.

Thinking down this path to the days when man evolved from a bunch of apes, I could observe the best catch 22 situation I've ever seen. After all it is God who assembled the pieces in the puzzle and it is bound to be beautiful. Animals spend all their life roaming around, feeding and reproducing; and hardly any sense could be made out of their lives apart from the instinct to exist and preserve their species. Man on contrary claims that he possesses the sixth sense which has to question, reason and comprehend everything in and around him. This led to a lot of inventions/discoveries and the creation of the most (arguably) evil concept - money. With the mind or the sixth sense cruising in all directions, man needed a standard base akin to a logarithmic base to compare and contrast individuals and fortunately or unfortunately the standard became wealth and then money. Once the standard was established, people started running madly behind money and save a few, men keep running for generations together in search of money. But if you talk to a wealthy person, his needs from the heart of his hearts are simple - peace, health and 'happiness'. In this context, he pursues happiness as a worry free life and all the three requisites he listed were something that existed in/with humans when they were nomads living like other animals.

A nomad who wanted to satisfy his thirst for knowledge built a world around him and in the end he yearns to get his nomadic life back. Now isn't that poetic?