HAPPINESS
I often think about happiness and related emotions- joy, bliss, contentment, satisfaction and so forth. What is happiness and how do we achieve it? Is happiness simply an extension of contentment, a result of some period of contentment? When we achieve contentment can we expect this to lead to something more, something we call happiness? Is happiness the same as joy, elation, bliss? Could happiness be an occasional, more or less unusual response to external conditions, the result of a good experience, a prize, a good day or month? When we achieve happiness is it permanent, a new state of being?
Contentment implies acceptance; satisfaction with the way things are is the essence of contentment. This placid state is different from happiness. Similarly, the occasional "good" thing doesn't seem to result in happiness. Winning the lottery doesn't bring happiness, but rather a possible moment of excitement, maybe of elation.
I think happiness is something entirely different, which can be continuous, without the passivity of contentment and without the highs and lows associated with elation. Happiness seems to me to be the result of achievement, something different from and more than acceptance of current conditions but something less than joy or elation.
Happiness is enjoying, not simply accepting; happiness is taking pleasure in things: a hobby, a game, a sport, a job, a friend, a co-worker. We can be content by convincing ourselves that things are ok but we need something more to be happy: To be happy, we have to aspire and achieve. It's not enough to eliminate pain by enjoying what we have (contentment); we need to have goals and progress.
Can we be happy if we have high standards, push ourselves to achieve, try to succeed in some objective way in a difficult goal and fail? Or must we lower our sights, modify our goals to turn contentment into happiness? We don't have to achieve our goals but we need to make progress, however tiny. We need to set targets and move toward them. The targets are our own: We don't need to measure ourselves by the standards of others but by our own standards. We don't need to reach the targets but to move in the right direction. And this can continue for a lifetime.
Or maybe the activities we engage in in trying to move in the right direction are enough. The happy people I know are doing something which is designed to move them toward some goal. Most of them seem insensitive to whether they are making progress. The unhappy people I know aren't doing anything. And those people generally are also discontented. They are unable to accept conditions as they are but they are also unwilling to set goals and move toward them. So maybe happiness is activity; maybe a happy life is a combination of enjoying what you have and an effort to have something more or different. Yes, that's it: Let's not flog ourselves for where we are but let's also avoid the passive withdrawal from the effort and activity designed to improve things. Then we'll be happy.
11-29-99
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