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The Search for Meaning

The Present Is Not All There Is To Happiness

Rob Gilbert says don’t just live in the now.

Take the time to smell the roses, poets tell us. When the past is full of regrets and the future evokes anxiety, it might seem plausible that the present alone offers happiness. Yet in this article I’d like to argue that contrary to much thinking on this topic, the present is not all there is to happiness – at least if by ‘present’ we mean the immediately present moment isolated from the past and future.

Happiness is as ambiguous and difficult-to-define as it is sought after. Still, we can probably say without undue controversy that happiness must at least include – while by no means being reducible to – a felt response on the part of a sentient being to perceived good things in that being’s life.

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