This is the view I am staring into as I write this. Forgive me for thinking this is paradise.
So, yesterday morning, when I met the owner of the lovely little bed and breakfast joint we are staying at, I asked – “So how is life in paradise?”
“Paradise?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “Wait till winter arrives..”
There is no paradise, I realized yesterday. I always knew it. Yet, I thought there might be a possibility. Paradise is a place where we imagine ourselves to be perennially happy.
But, what is happiness with no purpose? It is but a high. A high that goes away the moment we realized we are experiencing one.
I believe all the universal truths are known to us. Experiences in our lives make us realize we knew them all along. We just didn’t know we knew them.
Books hash and rehash them in various ideas and frameworks to bring them to the fore in one way or another, music reminds us of them, people illustrate them.. but at the end of the day, the universal truths are still the same. We just spend most of our lives figuring out how to live them.
Indulging myself in some serious generalization, Eastern philosophers believe that paradise lies ‘within’ while western philosophers believe paradise is out there and it’s upto us to find it. I, like Jonathan Haidt, believe that paradise lies somewhere in between. Every time we experience a moment where happiness, purpose and peace come together, we are in paradise.
There isn’t just one such place. There are many many such places. Some kinds of places are more likely than others to present such moments. If we know ourselves well enough and are aided by a bit of luck, we might even live in this paradise of ours. Of course, even in our paradise, it will never be all hunky dory because the most contentment sets in, purpose deserts us. And then the proverbial journey to find that balance will begin again..
Ah. Life.
A Learning a Day 