Self Discovery: The Ultimate Path to True Happiness

How do we define ourselves? The process of giving oneself some kind of identity goes beyond a name and confidential details inscribed on a card or a passport. To journey down the road of self-exegesis without oversimplifying who we truly are is a challenging exercise that bears no categorical conclusion. For seldom do we uncover the truth about ourselves buried under the deluge of wills, mores, traits, impositions coming from an over bearing world which mount on our very being turning us into products we never were.

Does the true self even exist? The Greek philosopher Socrates admonishes us to uncover our true nature. Man, know yourself as he puts it. But is the self knowable? What we think we know maybe the outcome of the layer load imposed by the world around us. The sage’s advice nonetheless is worth pursuing for self knowledge is indeed the only key to happiness. Self knowledge guides and instructs us. We conduct our lives or rather we ought to conduct our lives based on what we know about ourselves and how we perceive our true nature. The true self á la Jean Paul Sartre does not even exist. According to him, there is the being, there is nothingness then there is energy to keep evolving or changing the so-called nature inherent to all of us.

The Sartrien recipe however does not serve as a good prescription for a life meant to engineer happiness. Indeed, the basis for everything that we do must be rooted in self perception:  self perception that is not amorphous but rather, static and clearly defined. Besides, the postulation that man has no nature is in itself an admission that man’s nature is that he has none.

Quotidian life must therefore be lived with the essential self in mind. The recipe for a good and successful marriage for instance lies in one’s ability to find the right partner who will complement or fill gaping holes in the inner self. A sound education ought to ferret out our inner most talents often blocked by limitations in academia. One’s true talent should be shaped, formed and formulated into outstanding skills irrespective of how unusual said skills might be. Our daily vocations and careers should be nothing more than an extension of the self. A reflection of one’s true love morphed into a financial enterprise.

Modernism has however crowded our lives with so many exigencies that a vast category of resulting personalities exist with few if any at all, depicting the human being as nature truly intended. There is the first category which in my personal estimation is the dominant one made up of characters that are a complete product of the nurturing variable. An outcome of their environment no longer aware of who they truly are or even if such a thing does exist. The second category comprises of that lot who endeavor to fit in but are nonetheless aware of an intrinsic nature which happens to be at variance with the dictates and norms of society. The problem however with this second group is that the intrinsic self remains elusive even to themselves; unable to uncover their true nature they settle for a social mask that belies their true nature. The third group is a slight amendment of the second one. The awareness of the self does indeed exist and it is truly distant from social norms but in order to fit in and conform to normative standards it is suppressed and rarely expressed to the prying world. The final category is the group of absolute misfits. Odd and proud, members of this final but important group boast of outlandish inner souls and are only too happy to express it overtly, ignorant or stoic to the pronouncements of a judgmental world. To be brazen about one’s freakish nature could be the perfect recipe for true existential bliss.

We must heed to Socrates’ call for self discovery and identify ourselves in one of the aforementioned categories. In order to live life properly, the foundation must start with the individual individualizing the concept of happiness. The syndrome of being ignorant of one’s unhappiness due to our pre-occupation with a false happiness is however the modern norm. Mind you, fulfilling social conditions that bring on a worldly semblance of happiness at the expense of our real character is still tantamount to a life lived in a lie. The measure of a life lived in truth however lies in one’s readiness to meet the ultimate dominion of mankind with a smile. Jesus Christ and Camus’ Meursault both met death with little or no trepidation because their lives had been lived in ultimate truism living out their days as they meant to live them.

We must also aspire to discover that level of truism in our own lives for only then, can we boast of a life that has been well lived.