A Rational Pursuit of Happiness Requires Balancing Your 5 Basic Values

This self help article is written by James L Rushing

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Are you happy? Do you believe that happiness is possible? Do you know what happiness is? Can you define happiness, or existence, or consciousness for that matter. But then, definitions are usually not a pressing matter - unless you are unhappy. You can't live unhappy for long. Happiness, like bread and water, is a necessity of your rational nature.

Happiness is an emotional state sustained by your success in giving the right answers to the hundreds of questions generated daily by modern living as judged by reality. Reasoning correctly rewards you with all this earth and our culture of creation has to offer; such as cars, computers, condos, carnivals, ice-cream, carrots etc and that is the material half of happiness. To reason incorrectly is to make mistakes and the devil is a bad mistake. Things can always get worse - Murphy's Law #9.

Remember that happiness is different from freedom. Freedom is when your individual rights to your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness are guaranteed by a limited government. You can be free and unhappy. But you can't be happy unless you are free.

Happiness is when you balance the five values of your life by giving them equal time and energy and then combine them to create moments of ecstasy to accent your waves of happiness. 

Your five basic values are:

Friends
Money
Mate
Children
Philosophy

You must balance these five values by giving equal time and energy to each one. Only then can you be a whole and creative individual enjoying a rational state of emotional happiness.

A friend is the first value that you still seek, from the time you cooed into your mother's face and crawled to daddy, to the times you sang and excelled in ballet. To be balanced you must value all your basic values equally: friends, making money, wooing a mate, playing with and providing for children and studying philosophy.

Friends screw things up when everything else is going good. And friends are those people who rescue you in your darkest hour just by being there. You need them and they need you for the same reason. Your friends will respond with love to your time spent with them.

Money is a basic value and a necessary ingredient of being happy. Money is the popular medium for trading goods and labor for goods and labor because it works. You must value money not only for its liberating qualities but value where it comes from and where it goes. To be happy you must value the creation of wealth and oppose the destruction and the taking of wealth.

Mate is the third value you must give time and energy to seek out and maintain. A mate must be given equal time with friends and money if you will be happy. Happiness breaks down in the absence of an intimate other who shares your personnel life.

Through the ages un-limited governments have ravaged the lives of young and old lovers, constantly disrupting their lives and chance for happiness. We can have more control today of our rapacious governments but only if we actively oppose their use of force to do good.

To value children is necessary for your happiness from beginning to end. They don't necessarily have to be yours but when you value them and give them time and energy they become yours even though you have no legal rights. Striking the balance by giving equal time and energy to children grounds you in the present with fond memories of the past.

Philosophy is given less and less time and energy in this busy world and as a result valued less and less. Yet, your happiness depends on philosophy, in fact, your very existence depends on philosophy.

Because man survives by reasoning correctly, and because correct reasoning depends on philosophy - knowing why and how you exist and where you fit in an ever changing reality - being right more times than you are wrong is vital to your survival as a reasoning human.

So, happiness is a balance of your values and you keep your values in balance by creating equal time and energy to give to each. Happiness flows from this juggling act and combining values will create new delights.