I find that the words of Epicurus summarize the essence of happiness, understood as freedom to seek the values \u200b\u200bthat we have the assurance of life authentic. The research, the journey to this goal is already happiness.
I dedicate this letter to a person very dear to me .....
"Menoeceus,
You're never too young or too old for the knowledge of happiness. At any age it's nice to look after the welfare of the soul. Those who claim that it is not yet time to devote to the knowledge of it, or that it is too late, it's as if she were saying it is not yet time to be happy, or that it is now past age. From young to old as it is right that we dedicate ourselves to know happiness. To feel forever young when we are getting on in years under the grateful memory of happiness had in the past, and young people, strengthened in it, do not be afraid to prepare for the future. Let us know then the things that bring happiness, because when it's all we have, we do everything else for it.
Practice and ponder the things I've always recommended: they are essential for a happy life. [..] There is nothing terrible in life for those who really know that there is nothing to be afraid of not living anymore. Therefore it is foolish to those who claim to be afraid of death, not because his arrival he will suffer, but because it afflicts its continued hold. What once this crowd there, foolishly expected us crazy. Death, the most heinous So of all evils, does not exist for us. Where we live there is no death, when she is there we are. It is nothing for either the living or the dead. For the living there, the dead are no more. Instead, people now escapes death as the worst evil, now invokes as the rest to the evils which they live.
The real test, as he does not mind living, so is not afraid to live no longer. For him life is not bad, nor is it an evil not to live. But how to choose the best food, not quantity, so it enjoys the longest time, but the sweetest. [...]
A firm knowledge of desires makes every choice or rejection due to physical wellbeing and serenity to the perfect soul, because that is what the good life, we address this in everything we do, in order to turn away from suffering and anxiety. Once this was all internal storm ceases, because our living organism is no longer in need of anything, nothing should look for the good of the soul and body. In fact, we feel pleasure when they need to suffer the lack of it. But when we do not need not suffer.
[...] Consider also a great thing to independence from the needs, not because we should always settle for little, but to enjoy this too little if we happen to not have much, we are convinced that the abundance is enjoys with more sweetness if not depend on it. After all that is really necessary is not difficult to come by, the unnecessary is difficult.
The simple flavors give the same pleasure of the finest, water and a piece of bread make the pleasure more fully to those who are missing. Knowing how to live a little, not only brings health and makes us free of apprehension towards the needs of life but also, at intervals when we happen to lead a life rich, it makes us better appreciate the condition and indifferent to the fate of the jokes. So when we say that the good is pleasure, do not mean the simple pleasure of the pleasure-seeking, as they believe those who ignore our thinking, or oppose, or misinterpret, but how helps the body and not suffer the soul to be peaceful.
Why are not by themselves banquets, parties, enjoy the children and women, good fish and everything that can offer a rich sweetness of the table that make life happy, but lucid examination of the causes of each selection or rejection in order to reject the false constraints that are due for the soul of immense suffering. of all this, the principle is the wisdom and the supreme good, so this is even more appreciable the same philosophy, is the mother of all other virtues. It helps us to understand that there can be no happy life without being wise, fair and just, wise, nor life, devoid of happiness and just beautiful, because the virtues are inherent to the happiness and inseparable from this.
[...] Meditate day and night, all these things and other congeners, with yourself and with whom you like, and never will be prey to anxiety. Instead you will live like a god among men. It does not seem even more mortal man that lives in eternal reward. "
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