In my short 16 years of life, I have never found one philosophy that encapsulates everything I believe in. When I did find something that I strongly believed in, it was only temporary. There is so much new information thrown at us students daily that my views on how to live changed almost every week. We are exposed to countless perspectives on life from peers and teachers who all try to explain why they are correct, so I feel it is almost naive to choose and stick to one idea. Knowing that, I cannot confidently claim that one idea is "always true" or that there is one "right way to live" since I know I will change my mind very soon. However, this experience did teach me that I have to always keep an open mind, and always be ready to throw out anything and everything that I had at one time believed to be true.
For example, I used to strongly believe in the idea that happiness is a choice. There are many very rich, successful, healthy people that are much more depressed that others who are much less successful. But how can someone in such worse circumstances feel better about life than the wealthy? I found that the people who were really happy were the ones who chose to be thankful for the things that they had, and not take anything for granted. On the other hand, many of the people who are well off always focus on what is missing in their lives, while no amount of material wealth could ever fill all of those holes. Personally, I found that I could make myself happier by making sure that I noticed everything I was lucky enough to have. When I looked at my life through the eyes of someone who was worse off than me, like a homeless man, I became conscious of the fact that I was even conceited to feel unhappy. I felt that it was my duty to be thankful for the situation that I did not have to work for and maybe didn't even deserve.
But after thinking about the homeless, I realized that "happiness is a choice" is not always true--there are some circumstances where a person does not have the chance to be happy, even if he/she chose to look on the bright side of things. For example, the Joad family in The Grapes of Wrath was forced into a situation where happiness was nearly impossible. In scenarios like this, choosing to be happy will do no good in helping the situation, so these people are not lucky enough to have the option of being happy.
In the first semester of this year, my personal philosophy changed again after someone asked my physics teacher what he thought the meaning of life is. His answer consisted of only one, difficult to translate greek word: Eudaimonia. This literally translates to something like "good spirit" but its many meanings are far more intricate. I understood it to mean that a person will be happy and be successful when their desires line up with the universe's plan for that person. In less superstitious terms, it says that everyone is meant to do some specific thing in their lives, they just have to find it. I think that someone will be happy when they do what they were born to do, and I am still looking for that thing for myself.
I hope that I will find another way to look at life that I agree with even more than this. I don't think that I am ready to put everything that I agree with and believe in together into my own "personal" philosophy yet, but I do think I will eventually see enough of the big picture of life to do so.
