Epicureans believe that “personal happiness is the only sensible goal in human existence. Individuals are powerless to change the world and are not obligated to try, just seek to be happy.”
People have a longing in their lives that they cannot explain. They try to satisfy this longing with worldly love, possessions and relationships. Many people try to fill this void in many ways: love and human relationships, social causes, work and personal achievement, and religion. Becoming busy in life in order to achieve “happiness” does not fill the emptiness that people feel. John Choron said that “if you work hard enough, long enough, work (love, relationships, social causes, achievement, religion, etc.) becomes your ultimate goal and you’ll probably be too tired and too involved to be disturbed by the possibility that your existence is meaningless.” Satan has been very successful in blinding people from the more important things in life by means of fear, worry and making people “too busy” to think.
I’m not saying that you can’t be happy in life. Life is a test of faith, and there are things that are more important than those things that the world can give to us and puts so much emphasis on. Without a personal connection with the source of life, how can we claim to have found meaning and feel happy?
neumatikos 