You should have your own philosophy. You might go wrong, but that way will be worthy to live.

From the moment we wake up in the morning and till we sleep, we face a lot of judgments, advises, criticism and appraisals in every aspect of what we do. During normal life conditions, these are the things which shape our human relations and also our character and attitude to deal with fellow humans. All this cumulative experience and knowledge from years of living pushes people to take stands and decisions about their belief systems which they protect very hard. Once their belief system is challenged, their existence will fall in danger.

But a weak belief system is formed when a person listens and follows a philosophy which is centred on a single point of view. To make its followers not look for and think of an alternative points of view, that philosophy demeans or degrades all another points of view. This I am talking about religions, governments, political and ethical philosophies of all kinds. To counter it, there is one thing called “thought and reasoning” which most people are afraid and lazy to do because it shatters all their belief system which they have been following for 30 or 40 years.

There are lots of examples one could state. The people behind the opinion-shaping are parents, teachers, family members and society. The zeal to think independently is killed and the fear of independent thinking is installed in the childhood itself. That is the reason our society produces Leaders and followers but not distinct and different people.

The framework of society is scary for many people to try new things or look at existing things in a different way. The problem is that people raise up to success by challenging the system, but after becoming successful and being accepted by society, they start aligning their ideology with that of society. “There is no need to earn Rs 80,000 per month by the age of 25, there is no need to marry before 30, if it fails one can marry again, there is no need to have an own house by the age of 35, there is no need to have 2 kids, there is no need to have a car. Why there is no need is simple. Everything is just a point of view. If you really understand life and think ‘why’, a lot of things seem stupid and useless but followed blindly because of sheepish minds”

But people who lived all their lives in stress to achieve all those things, they cannot see a person being happy without all those things. It just makes them feel stupid for taking such a great stress and wasting their lives. So they make simple people guilty about not ‘achieving’. Both these are two different points of views. Stagnation of thought happens only if one blindly follows a single person’s philosophy. It needs a 360 degree understanding of the different points of view to shape an own philosophy. So I suggest people have their own philosophy. You might go wrong, but that way will be worthy to live.

“The pursuit of truth is not important. The pursuit of that truth is important which helps in reaching your goal, provided you have one” – Ayn Rand.

It means Philosophy itself has no use to you. If it enhances your thought to reach your goal of happiness, then it gets a meaning.