摘要：Happiness is an abstract concept that exists only inside our minds.Acceptance of pain, loss, and death should be part of our livin

Happiness Is the Wrong Objective in Life

幸福是人生的错误目标

But we should still seek joy and try to avoid pain.

但我们仍然应该寻求快乐，尽量避免痛苦。

Posted August 28, 2025 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk

发布于 2025 年 8 月 28 日 |米歇尔·奎克 （Michelle Quirk） 点评

Happiness is an abstract concept that exists only inside our minds.Acceptance of pain, loss, and death should be part of our living philosophy.We should make the most of our time on this planet, even if true happiness will never be reachable.

幸福是一个抽象的概念，只存在于我们的头脑中。接受痛苦、失落和死亡应该成为我们生活哲学的一部分。我们应该充分利用我们在这个星球上的时间，即使真正的幸福永远无法实现。

We are never short of recipes for happiness. The internet, in particular, is full of people who claim to be happy and to have the ability to make others happy if they follow their advice. Becoming rich also seems to be quite easy, but not quite as achievable as being happy. One has to be very gullible to really believe it possible to earn lots of money by working from home a couple of hours a day, as some promise, or even become a millionaire by simply ridding oneself of the constraints of self-doubt, as others claim. Being happy, on the other hand, appears to be the inevitable end result of a few wise and simple steps anybody can take. And while we can all imagine being happy (after all, we have all been happy for a little while at some point), most of us have never been rich, even for a little while.

我们从不缺乏幸福的秘诀。尤其是互联网上，到处都是声称自己很快乐的人，如果他们听从他们的建议，就有能力让别人快乐。致富似乎也很容易，但不如快乐那么容易实现。一个人必须非常容易上当受骗，才能真正相信像一些人承诺的那样，每天在家工作几个小时可以赚很多钱，甚至像其他人所说的那样，通过简单地摆脱自我怀疑的束缚而成为百万富翁。另一方面，快乐似乎是任何人都可以采取的一些明智而简单的步骤的必然最终结果。虽然我们都可以想象快乐（毕竟，我们都曾在某个时候快乐过一段时间），但我们大多数人从未富有过，即使是一小段时间。

It follows that a failure to reach happiness, when the road to happiness appears to be so clearly delineated for us by pop psychology gurus and other advisers, can only be the result of either a peculiarly negativistic stubbornness or perhaps some pathological personal inadequacy.

因此，当流行心理学大师和其他顾问似乎为我们清楚地描绘了通往幸福的道路时，未能达到幸福只能是由于一种特殊的消极固执或某种病态的个人不足。

I concede that there is a semantic issue here that needs to be clarified. What I mean by happiness is precisely what those who claim to have found its secrets describe: a state of almost constant joy and contentment, in which one can't wait to get up in the morning, every morning, to savor all the many pleasures the day has in store. No worries, no regrets, no fears, no pains. They have all been left behind during the process of a well-adjusted pursuit of psychological wellness. So we are not talking about a mundane and pedestrian state of relative and variable contentment, in which, all things considered, one shouldn't complain too much because others have it worse. That would be a totally natural state of mind, but it is not happiness.

我承认这里有一个语义问题需要澄清。我所说的幸福正是那些声称找到了幸福秘密的人所描述的：一种几乎持续的快乐和满足的状态，在这种状态下，人们迫不及待地想在每天早上起床，品味这一天的所有乐趣。没有烦恼，没有遗憾，没有恐惧，没有痛苦。他们都在调整良好地追求心理健康的过程中被抛在了后面。因此，我们不是在谈论一种相对和可变的满足的平凡和平凡的状态，在这种状态下，考虑到所有因素，一个人不应该抱怨太多，因为其他人的情况更糟。那将是一种完全自然的心态，但它不是幸福。

Happiness is not natural

幸福不是自然的

This brings us to my main point: I am not arguing that, contrary to what others claim, becoming happy is merely "difficult"; instead, what I want to convey is that happiness, as described in the previous paragraph, is simply impossible, like immortality is impossible. It simply isn't in our nature. This is because evolution has given us as a genome that is exclusively concerned with survival and reproduction. A state of a more or less permanent contentment not only would fail to improve our chances to survive and procreate but also would, in fact, be a potential obstacle to those primary missions. Happiness is merely an abstract concept that only exists inside our minds.

这让我们想到了我的主要观点：我并不是说，与其他人声称的相反，变得快乐只是“困难”;相反，我想传达的是，正如上一段所描述的，幸福根本不可能，就像永生是不可能的一样。这根本不是我们的本性。这是因为进化赋予了我们一个专门关注生存和繁殖的基因组。或多或少永久的满足状态不仅无法提高我们的生存和生育机会，而且实际上还会成为这些主要使命的潜在障碍。幸福只是一个抽象的概念，只存在于我们的头脑中。

I don't mean to imply that we might as well abandon all efforts to experience joy and renounce all the good things that life has to offer. Far from it. We should, of course, make the most of our time on this planet, even if true happiness will never be reachable. This would involve taking steps to make sure that we can extract as much pleasure from life, and avoid as much pain, as possible. This is what the Utilitarian philosophers postulated in the 18th century, and with some moral adjustments, remains relevant today.

我并不是说我们不妨放弃所有体验快乐的努力，放弃生活所能提供的所有美好事物。远非如此。当然，我们应该充分利用我们在这个星球上的时间，即使真正的幸福永远无法实现。这将涉及采取措施确保我们能够从生活中获得尽可能多的快乐，并尽可能避免痛苦。这是功利主义哲学家在 18 世纪假设的，并且经过一些道德调整，在今天仍然适用。

Acceptance

接受

Life—anybody's life—is a chiaroscuro that inevitably includes pain, and a measure of acceptance of this pain, instead of creating an impossible-to-fulfill expectation of psychological bliss, will, in fact, help us enjoy life more and suffer less, paradoxically. When the pain comes, we will at least know it is normal and not necessarily our own fault, or the product of our own inadequacy.

生活——任何人的生活——都是一种明暗对比，不可避免地包括痛苦，而对这种痛苦的接受程度，而不是创造一种不可能实现的心理幸福期望，事实上，它会帮助我们更多地享受生活，减少痛苦，自相矛盾。当痛苦来临时，我们至少会知道这是正常的，不一定是我们自己的错，或者我们自己不足的产物。

Acceptance of pain, loss, and death should be part of our living philosophy, and we should seek advice on how to reduce the first, how to deal with the second, and how to delay the last, rather than denying their existence with the help of facile and glib "inspirational" nonsense.

接受痛苦、失落和死亡应该是我们生活哲学的一部分，我们应该寻求建议，了解如何减少第一个，如何处理第二个，如何推迟最后一个，而不是借助简单而滑稽的“励志”废话来否认它们的存在。

A famous adage, attributed to different authors, reminds us that happiness is like a butterfly, which, when pursued, seems always just beyond our grasp. The rest of the adage suggests that if you sit down quietly, it may alight upon you. But only temporarily, of course. The butterfly will forever remain elusive.

有一句著名的格言，出自不同的作者之手，提醒我们，幸福就像一只蝴蝶，当追求时，它似乎总是超出了我们的掌握范围。这句格言的其余部分表明，如果你安静地坐下来，它可能会降落在你身上。当然，这只是暂时的。蝴蝶将永远难以捉摸。

来源：左右图史