I have the impression that some people are looking for happiness throughout their lives, in some cases maybe never reaching a feeling of being truly happy. They are painting a rosy picture of what it will take for them to be happy (possibly including the perfect spouse, beautiful children, (insert personal dream), etc.). I think this quest has something to do with perfectionism overall - always striving for something better. This means that in the search for happiness they prevent themselves from feeling happy. Ironic, huh...
For me, happiness is the ability to realise that everything is good, even when it might not exactly be true. But letting myself believe and feel that it is. Tonight I was happy. Everything inside me was at peace, I felt absolutely and truly satisfied with where I was right there and then. Breaking this down, happiness is about appreciating what you have in a certain moment, being able to shut any disturbances out.
Happiness is elusive, though. As soon as you start analysing it, the feeling will be gone. (Like the atom model: you cannot know both where the atom is and what its speed is, for those of you who are into that kind of analogies... ;)) The moment is fragile - you can only appreciate it when you have it, 'cause when you start thinking about why you are happy you will break the focus, and you cannot feel happy and analyse the feeling at the same time. Why not? Because happiness is a bit of perfection in a vacuum of time and space, and perfection cannot exist outside the vacuum moment. This also means that there can't be various degrees of happiness (since perfect is, well, perfect). Further, this means that the way you can measure happiness (if in some case you would like to talk about quantification) is by counting how often you feel happy, and not how happy you feel. Anyway...
Am I deceiving myself into feeling happy? Disregarding the negative (or just non-optimal) things around me? Hmm... Yes. And I treasure the ability to be able to do that. :)
Happiness is a state of mind. I believe in that now more than ever - despite the fact that I have had this text hanging on my wall for 8 years.
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In fact I have a few comments on the topic as I find the idea of pursuing happiness really interesting. I have spent some time on thinking about it and trying to discover what makes people in general happy.
ReplyDeleteSo to the point - at first I totally agree that the happiness is a state of mind. It is some kind of a choice and one's definition of happiness depends on some basic assumptions. Happiness is different for everyone, but basic rules apply to all of us. And so - if we try to notice every single positive thing and acknowledge it, and appreciate it - we become more happy. If we make the assumption that failure is not really an option, because every failure means something new that you have learned and another way that the thing does not work, we cannot feel "loosers".
I also believe that true life happiness consists of balance between professional life, private life, physical wellness, spiritual and mental balance. If we neglect even one of those - it is much harder to feel happy (though I don't say it is not possible!), but if we make sure that every single thing is in order - happiness is "natural".
I will finish the comment as it becomes quite a long one, but try to make it an interesting final point ;) - the King of Bhutan does not recognize GNP as the criteria of development of his country, they are conducting studies whether the population is in general happiness and on that asses if they are moving in good direction. As in some international studies people from Buthan seem to be one of the most happy ones in the whole world, maybe this is way to go?
How would you feel if our governments would use GNH (Gross National Happiness) as the assesment of growth ?