Imagine This

Imagine a world where no one ever dies, no one ever suffers any pain, no one ever loses anything they have, no one ever has to say goodbye to someone they love. Imagine a world where everything is always in flower, radiant with sunshine, suffused with warmth and pleasure, echoing with happiness. Imagine a world where every taste of life is delicious, every stroke of fortune is warm and fuzzy, every word is encouraging, every sight is a delight to the eyes.

Imagine such a world if you can, if you wish – and then forget it.

The world in which we actually live is very different from Paradise. People die daily, many for the wrong reasons. We all suffer pain. Everything physical passes into nonbeing, so we inevitably lose whatever we have, and anyone or anything we love will be ripped away from us sooner or later. The seasons change, the world rolls along its complicated path, and we take from it what we must have, if we can.

Accepting that we live in such a world is wisdom. Believing that we can live in the imaginary world of endless, perfect self-gratification is foolishness.

The Founding Fathers of the United States were philosophers. There’s an important distinction to be found in the words of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

The distinction is this: We have a right to pursue happiness, but not a right to be happy.

Further, each of us has a right to define happiness.

But if we decide to define happiness as Paradisal existence, free of any of the consequences that common sense would admit are integral to human existence, then we are asking too much. What we must acquire and spend to obtain such a life is too costly for ourselves and everyone around us. My Paradise creates your Hell.