Well, as far as I see it, there is no rhyme or reason to why anything is anything. We as a society accept things as they are, and forget about it. If the grass was orange instead of green, or cats evolved to be three feet tall, that's just they way it would be, and we would write a wikipedia page about it, and move on with our lives. So, whether or not you die happy, in some sexy accident, or just as miserable as the rest of the world has no affect on the future, the present, or the past; anything you, or anyone else does now won't change the outcome of anything. So, I ask again, What am I doing here? And the simple answer is Living. You are "alive", and just what are you supposed to do with your life? Whatever makes you happy.
Happiness feels good, and I bet that you would rather spend your life feeling good than feeling bad.
It's just common sense. So, if nothing you do matters in the long run, why not spend your very short time alive doing what makes you happy? Anyway, that is my opinion. I guess I came up with that because I spend six hours a day questioning why I have to sit in a room with people I hate listening to things I don't care about.
Let's a dig a little deeper in this though...
First, we have to take apart the word 'Happiness.' What does it mean? If you Wiki it... :
Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources."There you go. That's about as good as it gets as for a definition... Is that the only purpose we have as humans have? Well, no. There could be an enormous amount of reasons that could be thought up. A word that I have tossed up in the past is "enlightenment." Is our purpose, yours and mine, to be enlightened? To be truly happy, free of fear, in comfort with the idea of death, at peace with one's self, at peace with the world, free from wanting any one thing or person, and free from any distress that beings or nature cause? These are very hard to achieve.
Could you live an existence completely accepting of everything and everybody, not fearful of the unknown or any known creature/part or nature, and be fully comfortable in your own body?
Hm. Where was I going with this?
Well, I guess that some people argue that finding enlightenment is the ultimate goal in a human life. I think that's what Buddhism is-- correct me if I'm wrong. But one might think that that might be a little out of their reach; I agree, I wouldn't want to devote my whole life to that-- it sounds like a lot of work-- so I think that's where I came up with my hypothesis of just being content most of the time, or in other words, just avoid things that make you unhappy. I suppose you could go to the opposite end of the spectrum, and say that our purpose as humans is to just go on living how society expects you to, but to be completely content with death. One of my favourite lines out of one of my favourite books is, "You haven't lived until you think about death all the time", and quite frankly, I couldn't agree with that more.
So, you haven't lived until you think about death all the time, right? And why? Well, I'm going to try and to answer it in one sentence: If you haven't come to term with your existence, the beginning, middle, and end, then you haven't really started to exist yet. It's like getting in a car and not thinking about starting it, so you don't. You know? You're physically there, but you're not doing anything. You're kind of just wafting through life like a stalk of corn. It's not a good thing.
So, I guess I wouldn't stop at "Be accepting of your end", but "Be accepting of your end, and avoid things that would cause regret once you are met with it." Be happy.
Post Script:
Sorry this was so jumpy; I did it in two parts!
And I'm not going to go through it for typographical errors, so if you see one, tell me and I'll fix it.
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