Happy and Virtuous Person - Essay Example

Virtue: Happiness Happiness is something that you cannot create or parent by yourself, though you may be able to pretend it in front of other people. Happiness comes from yourself as almost a secretion in regard to the things that you do, especially if these things are repeated many times. The repeated things that you do causes the action of happiness and that action becomes your habit and your way of life. The habit that becomes our way of life is known as virtue. So, what happiness is according to Aristotle is that “every art or applied science, and every systematic investigation, and similarly every action and choice, seems to aim at some good (Aristotle, 1998, p.3).” To aim at some good in life is a wonderful thing, but let us be rational and take a look at the whole world right now and decide if it is possible to apply that concept to our entire life. Yes, we can, as President Obama said in his election. However, did he change anything himself, such as war and the economic problems? The answer is no. I can write a book on how to be a happy and virtuous person with step by step instructions on how to do it, but therein lies the question: how can someone do that? The one thing that I believe in my life is that I try to be virtuous, even though some of my friends see it as weakness, which sometimes gets to me. For example, from my previous years, young people in Saudi Arabia feel the need to fight if someone messes with them, regardless of the consequences. The story begins when I was almost 17 years old and my friend was with me. During that particular time, I was trying to cross the street and I was not paying attention to my surroundings. All of a sudden, my friend pulls me back because there was a car that was driving too fast. In the rush of moment I said bad words and the guys felt the need to fight back. My friend was angry and he wanted to fight and the other guys were the same. My virtuous moment was that my friend and I would have been able to wipe him out easily, but I decided that there was no glory to do so. I had mercy on him and that made me very happy to make a good decision. Morihei Ueshiba says, ”As soon as you concern yourself with the good and bad of your fellows, you create an opening in your heart for maliciousness to enter. Testing, competing with, and criticizing others weaken and defeat you (Ueshiba, 2007, p.55).” On the other hand, the most important thing that I put at the beginning of every thing I do is wisdom because without wisdom I cannot decide when it is a good time to be virtuous and when people take advantage of my virtues. With wisdom you can achieve every thing, eventually becoming either a virtuous person or a happy person. However, I believe that Aristotle or any other person can never be virtuous for their entire life because people will always find ways to break you down. The thing that people need to learn to do is to rise above that. Aikido is one of the important classes that I took at Dominican University. This class touched many important aspects in my life. I never cared much for any class that I took or am going to take in the future because I am only taking it just to pass the class and it seems to me that the teacher only teaches you because that is their job. It is hard for me to care about something that seems forced or done without care. In the Aikido class, however, we learned how to love and respect each other; not only our opponents but also everyone in the group. For that reason we are all able to reach our happiness in the dojo and in the class. For example, when sister Xuan-Tho told us the story of how she became the victim, we all had sympathy for her and prayed for her to God that she did not get it as she is one of our family. I mention this story because as a class we never knew each other prior to taking the class together, but in the Aikido class we learned how to become more happy, eventually becoming like a family, enriching our happiness through respecting each other. Aikido practice has helped me to understand that we are our enemy; if we are able to control our angry emotions we will live our lives in happiness every day. In my opinion, we should also be able to accept any bad things even if they are hard to accept because when we accept them then we will be warriors. Chogyam Trunggpa says that, “The warrior who experiences windhorse feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once (Trunggpa, 2009, p. 85).” In dojo, someone will always show aggressive behavior towards you. In those cases, how you handle your emotions will determine if you become a real warrior by fighting your negative instincts and impulses, reaching that level of happiness. Life is a matter of choice and choosing will affect our life either for a long time or for just a short time. As everyone throughout the world knows, they should only make the good choices, even though the temptations of life make us want to choose the bad and wrong ways either because it is an easy shortcut or because we did not have enough wisdom. Therefore, we lose our happiness and we blame the situation on other people because we are not happy in our life due to our own choices. Works Cited Aristotle. The Nicomachean Ethics. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1998. Trunggpa, Chogyam. The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Incorporated, 2009. Ueshiba, Morihei. The Art of Peace. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, Incorporated, 2007. Read More