Why your Epicurean approach will never make you truly happy | Arthur Brooks

🌍 **Mother Nature doesn’t care if we’re happy.**

Her only goal? Survival. She wired us to seek food, safety, and reproduction — not happiness.

In fact, 😟 **negative emotions serve a purpose**. Fear, anger, and sadness are evolutionary tools to keep us alert and responsive to threats. Mother Nature *needs* us to be uncomfortable sometimes.

But here's the twist: **Happiness is our responsibility.**

It's a human — maybe even divine — pursuit.

🧘‍♂️ Enter Epicurus, the ancient Greek philosopher. Contrary to the common image of indulgence, his idea of happiness was simple:

👉 **Eliminate suffering**.

By reducing sources of pain — toxic relationships, stressful habits, unnecessary friction — we can create space for peace. It's not about chasing pleasure, but avoiding harm. And that idea has echoed through history.

Today, we’re living in what some call an **“epicurean age.”**

We overprotect kids from pain, shield students from uncomfortable ideas, and try to bubble-wrap life. But here's the problem...

⚠️ **Avoiding suffering doesn’t eliminate unhappiness.**

It just weakens us. We still experience negative emotions — without the growth that comes from hardship.

🌓 As Carl Jung put it:

> “We only know what good is because we’ve seen bad.”

By avoiding discomfort, we also rob ourselves of contrast — the very thing that gives joy its meaning.

So ironically, in shielding ourselves from pain,

we may be shutting the door on bliss.

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