Pursuit of Happiness

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist. " - Epicurus

A pamphlet announcing the opening of a new bar & restaurant near my home named Epicurus, triggered memories of my childhood when i used to naively think that Epicurus was an European restaurant chain because of the numerous outlets of the same name that i encountered. Only later in my life, i came to know that Epicurus, the ancient greek philosopher inspired his followers to seek to live without pain or fear and was certainly ahead of his time in his belief that the existence and behavior of everything in the world is based on the movement of invisible particles, which we now know to be atoms.

Few philosophers have come up with more suggestive and more relevant answers to the pursuit of happiness than Epicurus. He taught that the point of all one's actions was to attain pleasure (conceived of as tranquility) for oneself, and that this could be done by limiting one's desires and by banishing the fear of the gods and of death.

Epicurus' hedonism was widely denounced in the ancient world as undermining traditional morality. In the modern age, we think of Epicureanism as a life of eating and drinking to excess in order to best enjoy life. However, this was never the intention of Epicurus, who merely wanted people to understand that to experience modest pleasures will allow fear and pain to subside, in itself creating the greatest pleasure of all: a life of contentment through equilibrium.