The Nature of Happiness

Great Debates
21

For me, it’s not one set of subjective criteria. I don’t seem to feel happiness on a linear scale, but rather as a place in 3D space where even the ‘labels on the axes’ don’t have to be the same over time (I hope you get what I’m trying to say here).

That said, I can remember the happiest moment of my life. What’s more, in some indescribable way I knew it was going to be at the time. And the really odd thing was that it was nothing special at all. Just driving down a country road with my folks after playing tennis, about 22 years ago. That’s it. A total bliss.

I do wonder in my more realistic/cynical moments to what extent brain chemistry comes into play. But that’s only abstracting the problem - i.e. what causes a certain chemistry which makes or allows us to feel happy at a given point in time. Probably some combination of all of the above suggestions.

22

I too believe that the attainment of ones own personal goals is a sure fire way to achieve happiness.
I remember going through quite a Quarter Life crisis. I was 25 had a masters in psych and was still temping and waiting tables. My brother who was 30 was making 60K a year and buying his first home. But I was not truly unhappy. I knew I would make it one day and I have to my own personal liking and I am very happy. My wife and I are both teachers, we have no kids yet (I stress the Yet) and we are fullfilling our goals!

Happiness is definitley from with-in. Money has nothing to do with it. If one is completely self satisfied with their life, love, inner person, they will be happy. When you fulfill your personal goals you reacha level of enpowerment that is only yours and this is very awesome. Its like when I was 16, I mowed lawns all damn summer to pay for my first car. I loved that little car when I got it. Alot more than the kids who had cars bought ofr them I’ll tell ya.

Happiness in its true nature comes from decisions you make internally, on how to live your life to attain your own personal goals, and upon attaining those goals it thrives on the enpowerment you feel as being your own and not bestowed upon anyone else.

23

Happiness is the mortar holding together the bricks of life.

24

I’ve done my best to do that, but living in a big city and working in a magazine shop makes it hard. I’ve had to settle for severe reduction, and not having a TV helps.

I’m truly coming to believe that Adbusters claim that advertising is psychological pollution. You don’t realize how much it affects you until you cut down on it. There it is, constantly agitating your every appetite to get you to buy stuff. And there’s a generalized feeling that happiness is the next purchase away, which it never is.

25

I’ve been happy before and since but the happiness that I felt on one particular day haunts me.

I was on a bus, going nowhere special, the weather was wet and grey. I hadn’t just won the lottery/completed my finals/found a new gf/discovered a cure for cancer, or anything.

In fact the circumstances were singularly unremarkable.

And suddenly, I was happy and content and at peace with the world. My mind was still and I felt no fears. It was profound. Even telling you guys about it 15 years later gives me a warm tingly feeling and the faintest echo of how I felt.

{narrative turns left}
Two years ago I was having a pretty lousy time, I was stressed by my job and I was suffering from a chronic illness which affected almost every aspect of my life, plus other general life grinding shit getting me down, as it does.

I’m not one for New Year’s Resolutions, but this was the Millenium Year, and it seemed a good idea to get some objectives to drag me out of this malaise, so I determined what things I would do to make me happy, and I swore that I would do them.

I changed my job, but like a fool for one more stressful. My illness got worse. The life grinding shit ground on. I was miserable.

As 2000 was coming to an end I couldn’t help but reflect upon what a pathetic job I’d made of getting happy, really, I sucked at it. But then as I thought about it, I realized that my job was not stressy because I made it so, I wasn’t choosing to be ill, the life grinding shit had never once solicited my opinion as to its desirability.

I was gobsmacked – I needed X, Y and Z to make me happy, and yet X, Y and Z were outside of my control, and not behaving very cooperatively. What can you do? You can’t change X?

But you can change your desire for X!

I just stopped wanting these things. My stressy job was not my problem, hell I turn up and work well or badly – they still pay me. I was ill, but hey! that’s how it is. Life grinding shit could kiss my ass! I had given myself permission to be happy not because of what I had to be happy about, but in spite of what I had to be unhappy about.

It worked. I recommend you trying it. And taking bus rides.

26

I think there are different types of happiness: perfect physical comfort and security- aka clean warm sheets, and not having to get up early- is a different type of happiness from having finally completed writing a poem, and that is different from falling in love. Physical/intellectual/emotional/spiritual, perhaps.

(Clears throat, prepares to recite Westminster Catechism.)
“Man’s chief and highest end is to…”
eeek!
(ducks and runs)

27

Unwashed: Well put. I’m of a personality type that doesn’t stress excessively about unavailable things, which I find contributes positively to my mental health.

Hamish wants me to draw a distinction between not wanting to desire things that you can’t attain because of your circumstances (a job, a trip to Italy, health, whatnot) and what are usually called higher goals. In other words, between things in which the “fulfillment” is supposed to be in the attainment and things in which the fulfillment is in the struggle.

I struggle very hard for things I, personally, will never attain - sustainable development, liberation, democracy, creative expression (hell, the way things are going, extending the metro falls in this category). These things bring fulfillment because you struggle for them, not because you attain them (you typically don’t).

Goods and status are comparatively easy to obtain but they are not as fulfilling as they are often promised to be. God knows I don’t despise posessions (I’m typing on one of my favourite ones now) but they don’t fulfill me so much as keep me content between and during my more important struggles.

In this context, not having certain ones is little more than an annoyance. I’d like to have a dishwasher, and I don’t have the money. Well, then, I’ll wait until I have more, then I’ll see if I still want to spend it on that.

28

matt, much agreement with your last, prompting me to make a clarification. When I said that I completely believe that happiness consists in the ability to set meaningful goals that one can attain I ought to have added that attainment doesn’t have to be absolute. To feel as though one has done one’s best to promote, say, sustainable development, can be an attainment. Certainly one wouldn’t want to feel as though one couldn’t struggle for worthwhile ends on the grounds that it would produce unhappiness.

Hint on the dishwasher: buy nice skin cream and apply to hands under rubber gloves. Run water very, very hot while washing dishes. Remind yourself that, in doing so, you’re actually giving your skin a luxurious moisture treatment while doing dishes. For an added plus, time said wash-up/spa experience while listening to “Democracy Now” ;).

29

This is pretty close to what I was going to say. I’m gonna go out on a limb, and say that happiness is a decision, in sense that you can choose to be content with your situation, whatever it is.

As a Christian, I believe that true happiness can happen only when I’m in line with God’s will. If that’s the case, then no matter how hard my life is, I will be content. Otherwise, no matter how nice things are, no matter how much I have, I will not be satisfied. I know this is true because I’ve experienced both sides of it.

30

I wouldn’t go that far. There are a great many circumstances under which it is not a good idea to want what you have, and perfectly understandable to be miserable, such as oppression.

31

Three grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.
-Addison (1672-1719)

This has always expressed it best for me.

32

well, I posted in this thread yesterday, and today it doesn’t seem to be here, so here goes #2.

Happiness: out of all concievable mental states, it is the one most (or more) desired.

I guess that’s kind of obvious, but I think it’s about the only way to tie together all of the disparate definitions we’ve gotten so far.

I think the more interesting question is why some people desire some emotions more than others, but pretty much everyone is repelled by certain emotions. For instance, there’s a kind of sensual happiness, like Cj 's warm socks, and then theres also a more intellectual happiness that we attatch to acheiving one’s goals (or working towards them, if you make progress your goal). But then, nobody desires low self esteem, or the sadness experienced after a death in the family. As to why that is…well, that probably requires maybe another hundred years (depending on how in-depth you want your answer to be) of nuero-psycological research. Since happiness is an internal state, you can’t really say much more without understanding how our emotions work in the first place.

33

I like this. It encompasses my own view, broadens it, and states it succintly.

I think part of why we have so much trouble with happiness these days is there are so many definitions of what it is. I like this approach here, because all three parts involve looking beyond oneself – toward what one can contribute, toward that which one loves, and toward the future.

I think selfishness is the source of much of the world’s unhappiness – not just of the unhappiness of others, but of our selves. The great trap of selfishness is that it promises satisfaction without ever really delivering it for more than a moment.

I’ve tended to go back to the Ancients Greeks for my definitions of happiness – Socrates and Aristotle mostly – because I find happiness as it’s defined today too narrow, and unsatisfying. The concept of a good life – that is, of an ethical life – is very important for me.

34

Happiness, to me, is the absence of stress.

Stress is the measure of the distance between right and wrong: i - r = s, where i is the ideal state, whatever you imagine that to be; r is reality, or the state you actually find yourself in; and s is stress. As the value of r approaches the value of i, the value of s approaches zero. The value of Happiness is inversely proportionate to the value of Stress, so as the value s approaches zero, the value H approaches infinity.

Now of course, there are any number of elaborate equations one must work through to calculate the individual values in the above equation. This process is called life.