"I cannot tell if what the world considers "happiness" is happiness or not. All I know is that when I consider the way they go about attaining it, I see them carried away headlong, grim and obsessive, in the general onrush of the human herd, unable to stop themselves or to change their direction. All the while they claim to be just on the point of attaining happiness. My opinion is that you never find happiness until you stop looking for it."
- Chuang Tsu, 370 - 301BC (reportedly)
Chuang Tzu, or Chuang Tsu, or Zhuang Tze, or Zhuangzhi, or Chouang-Dsi, or Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze, or even just Master Chuang, was a 4th Century BC Chinese philosopher. Or maybe not. There is speculation that some of what Chuang Tzu wrote during China's turbulent "Warring States" period was written by someone else, or that it was even all written by someone else. In Chinese history, just about anything goes, it seems.
Who Chuangtze is or was is academic by 2,000AD. "Zhuangzhi", simply named after its enigmatic author, is a classic of world literature for its content rather than its writer. Perhaps Zhuang Tze would have liked it that way. It was written in the context of its times. About two and a half thousand years later it still has relevance today. I could pull any number of quotes or stories from this fellow's book - some of the anecdotes are tremendously entertaining. I like the passage above. I like it because it underlines the notion that even in times when Stonehenge had only just fallen out of use and the Roman Empire was on the rise, people were stuck with jobs they did not like, relationships they could not stand, friends who were not really friends at all, horses that needed trading in, houses that were too big to clean, and so on.
Like today, this was easily rectified. Even then, all people had to do was change.
There is that word. Change.
I am not going to go on about change. This is not an epistle about "ain't it awful". This is just a whimsical moment. I just want to say to Zhuang Tze that his passage above is a wonderful line with a hint of rather coy wit. It resonates. You are spot on, sir (whichever one you are or whoever you may be), I hear you, and the only reason this deuced change business falls over is because you imagine that the human herd wants to be happy in the first place!
