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Modern people's lives are richer and more stable than in any era.
Curiously, people do not feel happier because of this, on the contrary, the voices of "living tired", "boring life" and "stressful" are very high.
Why do people feel unhappy?
What does the so-called happy life mean?
If people live in the world and pursue happiness, there is only one way to go, that is, to distinguish the difference between people and other creatures.
Only by working on this difference can one be happy at all; otherwise your happiness is the happiness of a low-level creature.
Usually many of us have similar feelings, for example, I think it is very happy to eat, and it is very happy to sleep, and many people really think so.
But don't forget, is this kind of happiness what people should pursue?
The answer is that if you don't find the characteristics of people, it is true;
But how could you not find it? Because man is a rational animal, the difference between man and other creatures lies in reason.
In other words, there is only one way to go to human happiness, and that is to try to live a rational life.
The question arises: What is a rational life?
Never think that reason is the constant pursuit of knowledge.
Because knowledge is an inexhaustible pursuit, learning and then knowing enough, insufficient and then learning, it will never end.
When I was studying in the United States, I felt this very deeply.
Yale University has a collection of more than 7 million books, and every time I walk into the library and walk between the shelves, I feel like I have a bright future.
Because I don't know what to do, so many books, how much can a person read in a lifetime?
Moreover, these books are written by readers like me, who may write a few in a lifetime, but put them in the library, and later people look at the past, only to see a back, and it does not take a second to sweep over.
If there is another big disaster, an earthquake, a fire, won't it all disappear?
So if man is a rational animal, the meaning of his happiness and happiness must not be to pursue it all the time, but to try to operate in reason and get a kind of settling power of its own, which is a key point.
Thus Aristotle said that the happiest man, he can constantly think about the content of thought.
In other words, the happiest person can go back to his own reason and know everything through his mind, but cannot act;
Because if you want to change the world by taking action, the action itself means that you are lacking.
You feel that the world is not good, but the truth is that even if you try forever, you will not achieve a completely improved outcome.
Many people have a perfectionist stance on the current situation of the world and the current situation of people, thinking that this is not ideal and want to improve.
But he overlooked the fact that since the advent of the earth, this state has been a practical state, constantly active, and as long as it is active, it is imperfect.
If you have to make it perfect, do whatever it takes, but there's no guarantee that you'll do it.
After understanding this, you have to learn to retreat into your own inner being, to make your own ideas rich enough to get a kind of happiness in them.
So, true happiness is a life of visualization.
Contemplation is observation, thinking is thought, observation and thought, so that a person himself can settle down and calm down.
This is a kind of wisdom in life, and we cannot deny that it is much smarter than the practice of chasing outward achievements to the point of causing interpersonal distress.
The Song Dynasty philosopher Zhu Xi asked, why are there so many difficulties in the world?
He advocated that people were originally good, but found that they were all caught in complicated difficulties later, why?
He summarized three reasons.
First, everyone's temperament is different.
The temperament mentioned here is closer to a person's constellation, blood type, and eight characters.
Everyone's temperament is different, some people are impatient, some people are gentle, some people like activities, some people like quiet, which is innate.
In the difference in temperament, we can see that everyone has advantages and disadvantages.
So if you ask, how should life go?
I said, do you know your own zodiac sign? You say you know.
That is simple, according to your horoscope, the shortcomings as far as possible to remove, the advantages as far as possible to play, life will not be complete?
But the question is: Can people change their shortcomings so easily?
Usually we think that we already have advantages anyway, and we can't run away, so we don't play;
For the shortcomings, I want to say that people are not sages, who can be blameless, without this shortcomings will not be me, there will be a lack of reasons to struggle.
Second, everyone has sensory temptations.
In other words, the ears, eyes, mouth, and nose cause us to have various problems when we are in contact with the outside world.
What do you mean by ear, eye, mouth, nose?
Confucius once said to Yan Yuan: Do not look at incivility, do not listen to incivility, do not speak of incivility, and do not move if you are indecent.
You go to some temples or ancestral halls, and there is still a tradition that there are four monkeys in them. These four monkeys cover their glasses, one covers their ears, one covers their mouths, and one puts their hands behind them, which is called "four don'ts", four don't do situations.
These four situations are related to people's feelings, actions, and impulses, so the temptation of ears, eyes, mouth, and nose is the beginning of people's troubles.
Everyone's ears, eyes, mouth, and nose have various desires, and with desires, there will be tensions between them and other people.
The third is interpersonal interaction.
The problem with interpersonal interaction is that it can cause both anger and complaining.
In fact, the so-called calm of mood is a rare situation.
Usually we interact with others, a comparison will be psychological imbalance, why is he better than me, smarter than me, luckier than me?
If you do something, you will feel unfair, as if you are bothering to do things, the effect is not as good as expected, and the other person seems to get it for free.
Once compared, your mood will become up and down, and it is inevitable to complain when emotions come.
Therefore, the I Ching speaks of personal cultivation and reminds us to "punish suffocation and desire", which is what it means.
The above three situations, the difference in temperament, the desire of the senses, and the interaction of interpersonal communication, resulting in mood fluctuations, are the causes of life difficulties.
When you understand it from here, you will know why people have to return to reason itself in order to have a happy and happy life.
By returning to reason itself, by chasing outward to yourself, you can transcend the above three problems and find the power to truly settle down in life.
This is just a philosopher's statement, but it does have his factual basis and is worth referring to.