I

February 17th

THE ENEMY OF HAPPINESS

“It is quite impossible to unite happiness with a yearning for what

we don’t have. Happiness has all that it wants, and resembling the

well-fed, there shouldn’t be hunger or thirst.”

—EPICTETUS, DISCOURSES, 3.24.17

’ll be happy when I graduate, we tell ourselves. I’ll be happy when I get
this promotion, when this diet pays off, when I have the money that my
parents never had. Conditional happiness is what psychologists call this
kind of thinking. Like the horizon, you can walk for miles and miles and
never reach it. You won’t even get any closer.
Eagerly anticipating some future event, passionately imagining
something you desire, looking forward to some happy scenario—as
pleasurable as these activities might seem, they ruin your chance at
happiness here and now. Locate that yearning for more, better, someday and
see it for what it is: the enemy of your contentment. Choose it or your
happiness. As Epictetus says, the two are not compatible.