The title is an answer to one of humanities Big questions: What will make me happy ?
Anyone who pursues happiness (which is everyone) knows for a fact that there is no one thing that will keep a person happy forever. As a matter of fact, in most of our experience the average longevity of a happiness is utmost a few days. Think about, winning a competition, getting a job, making a discovery, etc. Yet, the human spirit refuses to resign to contentment; it longs for something bigger, better. So that beckons the question: What is it that we really seek ?
A way to answer this question is to think about it within the framework of the True, the Good and the Beautiful. The key is to understand that any of the things that we discussed above – the things that gives us happiness (albeit a lesser happiness) – belong to one or more of these three categories.
In fact, this framework is also very helpful to understand why we like the things we like – even those misguided liking’s – what the tradition calls temptations. Behind every true temptation is an object that the person has determined contains one or more of the three elements. While that determination may be wrong, I believe in most cases it’s right.
However, the key to understanding the temptation is to recognize that the error we make is in expecting that the finite truth, the finite goodness or the finite beauty can make up for the infinite truth/goodness/beauty.
I believe recognizing this will help us to see through the temptation in short order. (Living by that understanding is however a different ball game !)
Now, let me switch over to a different thought that the framework of the True/Good/Beautiful allows us. That is to understand the logic behind those practices that seem to forgo certain things. The monastic life is a striking example. The lent that we observe is another. It seems to me that by forgoing the lesser truth/goodness/beauty, the person obtains renewed strength and focus to reach for the bigger truth/goodness/beauty.
Finally, a few words on the infinite Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Does that even exist and even if so, can a person obtain access to it ?
While I am personally more convinced than not about the existence of the infinite Truth, Goodness and Beauty, it will do this post more service to note that innumerable people before us were positively convinced that it’s indeed the case.
I conclude by quoting a rather eloquent one among them:
Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee. – St. Augustine of Hippo
What St. Augustine is referring to is exactly what we have discussed above: the Infinite Truth, Infinite Goodness and the Infinite Beauty.
Think about it … Peace !
P.S. All that I have talked about here is hardly my own, I was merely drawing from the richness of the Catholic Christian tradition.