Austerity against chaos: happiness begins when we stop desiring so much

Amidst the chaos, we must do our part to find moments of happiness (whoever seeks a continuum of bliss, one can already forget it, I'm sorry). Epicurus recommends that we distance ourselves from politics, because it only serves to stress us out. And this is despite not having lived through the disasters of the 20th century or the amnesia of the 21st century, which has revived fascist obsessions. It is obvious that we cannot remove the government of the polis from our lives, but we can create bubbles of time dedicated to much more important matters, like a little breeze when the sun sets, the murmur of the sea when the beach empties of people, paying attention to the sounds of birds, getting lost in the pages of a book, crying with emotion, and laughing at will.

There is no room for the victimhood that privileged beings like us usually exhibit. We are not allowed to say that we don't find the moment to enjoy these instants. We are responsible for them and have no excuse. It is pathetic that we do find moments to look at stupidities on our phones and not to contemplate the world and breathe, which is also a way of looking within ourselves. If we have decided to do things wrong, the minimum requirement is that we own it and do not complain.

Epicurus also gives us another piece of advice that can help us lead a more humane life (this is our paradox: we are human beings with a very inhuman, robotic life, based on inertia). We must desire less. It seems very difficult, but it is not. We only have to eliminate the excess of absurd desires that cloud our minds. In short, simplify. If we don't have serious problems, why do we suffer? It is a shameful suffering, we are not entitled to it. There are many, very many, homeless people raising children in precarious conditions, who dream of a future that society denies them because it considers them undesirable... In our case, it is better that, before complaining, we remain silent.

It would also be advisable for the decisions concerning our lives to depend on ourselves and not on what others think, believe, consider, or advise. Perhaps Epicurus would have a good heart attack if he saw the amount of intellectual, psychological, and emotional resources that this world invests in social networks, which do not serve to cultivate another of his strongholds: friendship. The real kind, the one of eternal conversations, the one of eyes that look at each other.