The definition of happiness

People have sought to nail down happiness for millennia. It is an overall positive concept. We can say that love can be smothering or that joy can be overwrought. Almost anything positive can have a negative side but the only possible negative thing about happiness is when it is not shared.

I cannot claim that I have found happiness or that my life is happy or that I have the answers in any other definite way. But I have found one thing. I now know what happiness is.

Some people think happiness is simple good fortune, material wealth, good health, good family relationships, the right number and kind of friends, the things a person wants on a day to day basis. And these things do often “make us happy” at least for a moment. Conversely, the complete lack of material necessities or family or friends, great poverty or ill health can cause much sadness.

Creative Commons image via Pixabay

But I’m guessing most readers of this blog are well aware that this is not really what happiness is and that, in fact, sadness is not the opposite of happiness. We all know of people who were wealthy and terribly unhappy. There are plenty of healthy people who are unhappy and hordes of people with many friends and family members who are unhappy. It is well documented that acquiring things that you want only makes a person happy very briefly and can lead directly to more long-term unhappiness.

Looking to more complex sources of happiness is often seen as somehow morally superior, but I am not certain it isn’t just wisely self-interested.

I used to think that happiness was adventurous living and passion or attention to one’s senses and living intensely in the moment. These things come close because they hint at the real heart of happiness.

Living intensely in the moment with full sensory awareness is a good start, but what makes happiness full and lasting are two things: Purpose and thankful joy.

It takes both. Let me show you why.

Purpose or meaning in one’s day-to-day life is a key ingredient to happiness. A person can be quite content, satisfied and well-off and yet have the nagging, uncomfortable knowledge that happiness eludes them. In fact, this is a common symptom of the modern malaise known as afluenza.

In wealthy western countries, a lot of people already have the material and even emotional comforts they need and desire. And to our dismay, we have found that this does not translate into much greater happiness than our ancestors enjoyed while struggling through lives of material want.

In fact, having what one needs can be counterproductive in terms of happiness because one of the easiest purposes or meanings to find in life is the striving for the material needs of yourself and your family. If one’s family is in need, it is simple enough for the individual to attach guilt-free purpose to every activity that either directly or indirectly fills these real needs.

I have met many people in developing countries or immigrants from struggling countries who have recently arrived in a wealthy country, who are radiantly happy over the long-term. These are not the desperately poor people who have been down-trodden by systemic oppression. Sometimes they are people who have escaped such traps by good fortune or well-timed hard work. The thing that they share is driving purpose. They have a realistic and graspable possibility of giving their children opportunities they could not have dreamed of when they were younger. And the happiness of these people is so palpable that it has become legendary.

Once we have what we truly need, that easy out is no longer an option. Many people pretend that their family “needs”. a new siwimming pool or a better car or private school or other things that take large amounts of money, but our deep subconscious and—dare I say it?—our souls know it is not a real need and thus the purpose often starts to feel hollow and people who base their lives on this kind of fulfillment eventually fall into psychological crisis.

Many of the same immigrants who were so happy while pursuing the dream of security and opportunity for their children find that once it is achieved, they themselves are less happy and their children struggle with conflicted feelings and deep dissatisfaction. This is the paradox of the happiness granted by such a survival-focused purpose in life.

Many parents—and I am somewhat guilty of this myself—base our purpose in life around the nurturing and flourishing of our children. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this either. It is another relatively easy out though and for many people parenting is temporary and this basis for meaning and thus happiness leads to empty nest syndrome for many or in some cases terrible grief and depression if something happens to the child or children to make flourishing no longer possible.

Others find purpose through their work. Purposeful and meaningful work is one of the classic ways in which we find purpose and thus happiness in life. It doesn’t mean that any activity outside of work is not fulfilling. Our bodies are well aware that we need rest and recreation to fulfill our purpose well and our purpose can also be a mis between work and family fulfillment.

People who have careers with clear and highly respected purpose, such as doctors, scientists or teachers, are often happier than people in roles that may resemble cogs in a vast machine. This is not an objective thing. By objective logic, a person who works in a job of mundane maintenance in the transportation industry or state agency that oversees such an industry may well have less feeling of purpose, though in reality their job ensures that the doctors, scientists and teachers get to their jobs and that their patients and students arrive as well.

The point here is that we must have purpose and meaning of some kind in order to enjoy deep and enduring happiness. For those who lack need or don’t have anyone who physically and emotionally depends on them and also lack clearly purposeful work or who cannot find meaning in their work the struggle for happiness is hard… but certainly not impossible.

Some of the more pro-active ways to find purpose are to be a lifelong student, always pursuing knowledge, or to join communities or causes which have a purpose that is important to you. Some people can find purpose or meaning in purely spiritual matters or in living a simple life well. There is nothing wrong with this, if the feeling of meaning in it is genuine to the individual.

In any event, purpose is generally the most externally conditioned of the two ingredients of happiness. You might think the opposite was true. Doesn’t a sense of meaning or purpose come from within whereas joy is something given to you by the outside? This is in fact false.

Purpose, real purpose, is dependent on many external factors. Unless you are one of those people who can find a true and abiding purpose in spiritual existence in and of itself, any other purpose can be destroyed or at least harmed by circumstances. Just as with the parent who puts everything into the nourishing of a child who then dies, other meaningful activities can and often are thwarted in major ways.

It is, of course, possible to overcome the devastation or destruction of that which has given life purpose and meaning for a time. We find new purpose all the time and a wise person will always have more than one source of meaning in their life. But reconstructing happiness after a major blow can be hard.

Moments of thankful joy on the other hand are much more at the discretion of the the individual.

Moments of joy or beauty are truly as necessary as purpose. We have all known or at least known of people who have lived with great and grim purpose and gained no happiness from it.

Some people do manage to make wealth and prestige their entire purpose in life but without joy and gratitude, they remain almost entirely miserable. Those who must struggle to survive in extreme situations certainly find purpose or meaning in that struggle, but if starvation, hardship or persecution is too intense it may be nearly impossible for the individual to find any joy and thus happiness is out of reach.

Some of the happiest people in the world are relatively poor. Poor countries often register as happier on psychological indicators. And this has a lot to do with the fact that purpose—i.e. survival and the survival and education of one’s children—are relatively easy purposes to find for lives in these countries, and yet, as long as there is no terrible war or famine, points of joy and beauty can be found even amid relative hardship.

Among countries with the highest suicide rates—definitely an indicator of a serious lack of happiness—there are many wealthy countries and also countries in which stress and social expectations are high. In the first group purpose may be a bit harder to find, which leads some people to give up without searching further for meaning, and in the second group, while satisfying strict social norms may give a kind of purpose, it is often a hopeless one and it does not lend itself to joy or gratitude.

For this reason, the happiest people tend to be people who have not yet achieved the things they most want and yet have enough to allow for moments of beauty, enjoyment and gratitude. Despair is the result of grinding poverty or overwhelming oppression and despair is the true opposite of happiness. While it is possible to be happy, even while holding a deep sadness for the loss of or separation from home or loved ones in one’s heart,, it is not possible for happiness and despair to coexist.

Thankful joy can be found in a moment for most of us. A glance at some scrap of natural environment, a lightening or darkening sky, a familiar and loved face added to a moment of mindful appreciation is all it really takes.

Ah, that sky through the bare birch branches of early spring. Ah, the warmth of the radiator on cold knees. Ah, a cup of a warm and tasty brew. For a moment, nothing more is necessary. And if this occurs in a life with purpose and meaning, the result is. happiness.