What Is Happiness?

….and how do I get some of that?

This is one of the main questions I brought with me to Ukraine. I wanted to use this time to figure out how I can live my life so that I can enjoy my time, do what I want to do, accomplish many things, and still be happy and satisfied.

I thought I had this figured out. I believed that the key for this was to find a small group of people who I really wanted to share my experiences with, and then constantly go through life finding new challenges and new experiences. I believed this because I had that in Kyiv and I was happy. Then, I came to my camp and although I very much enjoyed it I still felt that there was something big missing, and that something was the people to share it with.

…and then I went to Odessa, and I saw my friends I enjoyed my time very much. However, it was not the same. People had already changed. Some people for the better…others, not for the worse, but just not the same. If my intern friends are reading this and wondering if I hate them now, think not. I do not dislike any of you, and I did not have a bad time….but there was a certain realization and a peace of mind that I thought I had that has left me now.

On the way returning to my camp I developed a new peace of mind brought to me by my solitude…but this same solitude brought me loneliness before, and is sure to bring it again. This made me very confused, but fortunately for me when I got off my train in the town of Skole I had to walk for an hour to get to my camp. After getting lost, this turned into a 3 hour walk and a 100 grivna cab ride – err….I mean, I didn’t get lost, I was just taking the scenic route through the mountains. I never get lost. I’m good with directions.

So these 3 hours got the thought process going and another 10 or so hours at camp developed it more, and now I think I’m a little less confused than I was before. There are 4 things that I need to balance in order to find happiness, and even this is only one part of how I need to live.

The first is to find those people that I can share my experiences with. I need to find people who I enjoy spending time and talking with, both so that I can hear their experiences and so that I can tell them mine. These people will not be the same, and are likely to change many times throughout my life…but I need to be able to share my feelings with them and be able to relate to them as they also relate to me. This is so that I can understand myself internally and have opinions on this outside of my own. Currently, I only have a very small grasp on this.

The second thing is to seek new challenges, new experiences, meet random people, and to develop and grow. This is a pretty wide-open category. This internship meets almost every requirement here, but sometimes it is simply doing something I’ve never done before…..saying yes when I really want to say no…..saying hello when I’d rather keep to myself….living by the ‘Do Everything Once’ philosophy.

The third aspect is to find the solitude that I currently have, to ground myself in my own reality and make sure that my morals, my attitudes, my opinions, and my feelings are truly my own. I am very much in respect of the Ubermensch philosophy because it says for me to live as a unique individual and to find my freedom in my individuality. I do not think I will ever have too much a problem with this aspect as I have dedicated much of the last two years to developing this. Ask me why I think murder is not wrong and you’ll find out, but be prepared to have a lengthy discussion (if you don’t disagree with my reasoning it could be a very short conversation, but I would also be disappointed by this). I think my challenge is to not get to wrapped up with this aspect that it consumes the others. I am already comfortable with my own individuality and will always have time to develop it further.

The last item here….well, in the process of writing this I have deciding to trim it down to only three and combine the 4^th item into the second and third. Originally, the second aspect was to seek new challenges and do everything, while the third was mainly to live by own morals. The fourth and final aspect was then to meet as many new people as possible, and while considering and learning their viewpoints, to not let them affect myself too much. Not that I don’t care about their viewpoints, but that I don’t need to seek their approval and overall do not act so as to prove myself and my worth to others. I feel that I have merged these 4 into 3 but wanted to write this so that I will remember my thought process when I reread this, and because I like to ramble on instead of going back and editing.

To conclude this entry, my emotions and feelings are still very confused for a few reasons. I have learned something and my mind has been a very busy place for the last 30 hours. The people involved with my making my mind go haywire will probably not understand as I do not yet understand it myself…but I look forward to thinking about things I had never considered before my internship. So once again, Ukraine I thank you.