Sunday, May 20, 2012

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness (Part 3)


The Pursuit of Happiness.

As I was writing this blog I wondered what the forefathers thought what “pursuit of happiness” meant to them, and I came about an article that said:  “In composing the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson understood that it's up to the individual to decide what pursuits will cause him or her happiness. However, the Founding Fathers also understood that government has a responsibility to create a society where one's right to pursue happiness is guaranteed by social and legal protections.”
I find this very interesting. I, for one, find the whole issue totally subjective, because many of us think of happiness as something  temporary at times, and others view it as I state of mind, a choice. A friend of mine used to say: “if a problem has solution why worry about it, it has a solution; and if it doesn’t why worry there is nothing you can do”.  As I said earlier that seems to be a choice, that some of us have a hard time living with it. We used to say that he lived in utopia, or as we used to call it in Spanish “la onda lira”.
I guess that Jefferson’s view, together with the others who signed the declaration of independence, had a very different view from the people whom they owned, and whom they did not consider themselves their equal.
I will not elaborate more on this one because in my conclusion in the next blog

to be continued

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