Is anyone in this world genuinely happy?

Great Debates
1

(I didn’t find this topic to be “less-than-cosmic,” so I posted it in GD. If the mods find it to be more appropriate in IMHO, feel free to move it and I will flagellate myself later. Thanks.)
I would like to know if anyone in this world is truly genuinely happy with his or her life and self. I know I’m not a perfectly happy person, and I strive every day to figure out what would make me happy. Do any Dopers consider themselves genuinely happy? And specifically:

What is happiness?

What makes a person happy?

Why are you perfectly happy?

Am I oversimplifying what happiness is?

Like I said, I’m not the happiest of people…I suffer from ADHD, depression and a good bit of baggage from my childhood (it wasn’t abusive or anything, just not the most nurturing one). But I am not completely unhappy either…I count my blessings and realize that I’m lucky to have a lot of things many people don’t have. Nevertheless, is anyone willing to share and perhaps help me on my quest to find the answer? Thanks.

Adam

2

I consider myself happy.

I have a great job and a great wife. The people I work with are good people. The people I meet every day as a small town newspaper editor are generally interesting.

Yep, I’m happy. Generally, when I hop on my bicycle to go touring around the town looking for stories or photographs people wave, or stop me to chat or offer me a glass of lemonade. Yeah, I have been threatened by crazies and stuff like that but that just adds to the fun of being a newspaper editor.

Possibly I am happy because I have been places where it was close to impossible to be happy. I saw people starving to death when I was in the Peace Corps, I saw people really messed up by war when I was in the army. When I was a big-city journalist, I saw some terrible things too.

Somewhere along the way, I decided that there was no percentage in not being happy. What’s that line from the poem?

“Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone,
For this sad old earth must borrow its mirth
but has troubles enough of its own.”

TV

3

The first thing that sprang into mind was a vague recollection of Plato or Aristotle stating that you can not judge whether a person is (or has been) truly happy until the end of their life.

Not totally relevant to the OP, perhaps, except in the establishment of happiness as a fleeting thing.

I also vaguely recall a college friend telling me that their Psych 101 professor talked about how one can sometimes view certain emotional states ax combinations of others (e.g., IIRC, guilt = happiness + frustration). I don’t know how valid this view of emotions really is, but I’ll use it to posit that happiness is something like a combination of relief and pride.

I say this because I think what makes us truly happy is having gone through some sort of trial and feeling that we have prevailed. The trial need not be anything life-threatening or earth-shattering.

For instance, I have been particularly happy for the last several days. The prime reason for this is that I spent a year teaching in a traditional classroom (a first for me), and now have the summer off with pay (read 'em and weep, folks :stuck_out_tongue: )

This year was difficult, to say the least, but I feel like I did a god job and I’m glad to have seen it through more or less successfully. I am also relieved and proud that:

[ul]
[li]I don’t have to look for a job all summer like I did last year[/li][li]My wife and I have enough money that we don’t need to find extra work during our vacation, resulting in my first unscheduled summer since I was about 5.[/li][li]I have been successful to the point where I can afford a computer and internet service, and that I have held my own in intellectual here on the boards.[/li][/ul]

In short, I have no reason not to be happy. At the moment.

My department head tells me he had the same experience last summer, his first one off since he was 18. By the end he was clawing the walls out of boredom. I can understand.

We are not made for perfect happiness, IMO. Our happiness derives inherently from tribulation, however small. Therefore we can not always be happy under any circumstances. We must toss ourselves out into the world, and succeed at something in order to be happy. When we don’t, we suffer.

4

I think happiness is a percentage thing. We are to some extent at the mercy of hormones, stress, behavioural conditioning etc, so I would wager that there are very few people who are happy all of the time, even people with intellectual disabiilty have down times. However if the good times outweigh the unhappy times, then you could probably describe yourself as a happy person.
Happiness is one of those things that you don’t necessarily think about until you are unhappy.

5

To me, happiness is any condition where I don’t give much thought to my state of being. Basically, it means that I am busy and focused on whatever I’m doing to an extent where I can tune out unrelated physical and psychological misery. I am often happy when I listen to immersive music, and very rarely under other circumstances.

6

You want to know who is truly happy?

My sister in law. She was born with microcephaly, a birth defect similar to Down Syndrome. At the age of 35, she has the functional intelligence of about a five-year-old. She lives in a group home in the same town as her mom, she has a menial job that keeps her busy, and she is completely unfettered by the complexities of the world that I suspect are what bring the rest of us down.

I will not say it was fair that she was born this way. I will say that at fleeting times, I can almost admit to myself that in some ways I envy her.

7

Heck yes I’m happy! I love God and He loves me and when I die I’ll be with Him forever. That right there is enough.

But it also helps that I’m healthy, I have a great husband, I have the world’s healthiest kid, nice friends, a great church, I love my major in school and I am looking forward to a career I will enjoy after I graduate. All of my (true) needs are met and most of what I want, as well. I have a nice family (most of them) and in law’s that are not only cool, but also refuse to meddle. It’s summertime and we haven’t had even one truly hot day yet.

Oh sure, there are things about my life I don’t like. I could use some more money. I need to lose a lot more weight. I wish my house had an air conditioner (for the days when it does get hot here). I’m not speaking to my father and probably never will again. Currently I have an ingrown toenail that really hurts. My credit rating sucks. I have friends and family with genuine needs that I am powerless to help. If I thought long enough, I could come up with a big list of woes.

Ya know what, though? If everything I consider wrong with my life never changes, I’ll still be happy because I refuse to spend my 80 or so years on earth miserable. Life is too short to go around complaining and feeling sorry for yourself (I’m speaking generally here, OP, not accusing you of doing this).

8

I think happiness is one of those things that individual people quantify differently, like love or faith. Each person will have a different idea what happiness is and what makes them happy, and different standards as to the degree of how happy is enough.

I think there is also a big difference between something that makes you feel happy and actually being happy.
For example, a sunny morning or a nice cup of tea makes me feel happy, but does it actually make me Happy? Temporarily, sure, but in the overall long term, not so sure.

I, too, have suffered from depression since before I care to remember, and if I was perfectly honest with myself I’d have to say that the majority of the time, no, I’m not Genuinely Happy. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy either.
I think in my case I’ve put too high a value on genuine happiness and made it virtually unobtainable for myself. For me genuine happiness would be perfect job, perfect figure, perfect home, perfect life, perfect everything, yet I’m unable to define what perfect is in this regard. For me, it’s also about not having a care in the world, and I’m unable to not worry that something might go wrong, or I might fail someone, or obscess over some comment I or someone else made.
I put all of this down to the depression deliberately setting the sights so high. It’s much easier and more familiar to feel down. Genuine happiness is a bit frightning, therefore I convieniently place it just outside my grasp so I can justify feeling Stoopid to myself and not have to do anything about it.

It doesn’t mean I can’t feel happy though. And there are millions of things that make me happy. My man, my friends and family, my cats, a nice cold beer, long hot bath and a good book… I’m actually exceptionally easily pleased, give me a balloon or show me a card trick and I’m over the moon.

Can I fight the chemisty and bad patterns in my head and achieve perfect care-free happiness? I’ve managed it for a few days at a time with help from people I love very much, and it is getting ever so slightly easier each time. I dunno if there’s any connection, but I’m ticklish again for the fist time in my life since I was about 3 years old.
Can I achieve it full time? I don’t know, but I think it would be nice to feel generally happy and only occasionally sad when bad things happen rather than the reverse that I have at the moment.
Does genuine happiness even exisit full time? I hope so.

9

When I was in college, I had a job where I made deliveries to a sheltered workshop. The employees were all mentally retarded, but were the most cheerful, happy group of people I have ever met. Their innocent, guilless demeanor and indefatigable friendliness toward coworkers and strangers alike was refreshing. Like you, I envied them their happiness.

10

I, too have known mentally disabled people who were unencumbered by the stresses of daily life. In a way, they are enviable, but I think the act of weighing and acting on those stressors creates degrees of happiness that they’ll never know.

Happiness is relative. I’m happier today than I was yesterday, but yesterday wasn’t nearly as bad as a day I had a few weeks back.

What is happiness? I suppose, in the most basic terms, its the will to continue on with your life working toward…happiness? Contentment? Personal fulfillment? Those that are truly, irrevocably (at least in their own estimation) unhappy are the ones who choose to get off the bus, in a manner of speaking.

11

I am the most incredible thing in an incredible universe. I am a pattern of ever-changing atoms which somehow has the ability to think. Nothing like me existed for 12 billion years. I am borne of supernovae, I am Made of Stars. Every piece of sensory input I receive has an inexplicable quantum effect on the universe - I am the universe’s way of observing itself. My life is a wonder; I will live my life in wonder.

I am happy.

12

Nicely put.

13

What is happiness?
A snow day with no work

What makes a person happy?
Having a minimum of number of events in your life that keep you from enjoying the good stuff.
Why are you perfectly happy?
I’m not, but people that are seem to be content living simple lives
Am I oversimplifying what happiness is?
Nope, the concept itself is simple.

14

You know, in discussions about happiness I’m always tempted to quote two lines from the movie “Harvey”, spoken by James Stewart:

“Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, ‘In this world, Elwood, you must be’ - she always called me Elwood - ‘In this world, you must be oh so smart or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me.”

“I always have a wonderful time, wherever I am, whoever I’m with.”

Ed