What is happiness?

What is happiness?

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Happiness is what every human being supposedly strive for, the elusive Holy Grail for every human being. But what exactly is Happiness? Wikipedia, the symbol of humanity’s collective knowledge and opinion openly and frankly admits:

Happiness is a fuzzy concept and can mean many different things to many people. Part of the challenge of a science of happiness is to identify different concepts of happiness, and where applicable, split them into their components. Related concepts are well-being, quality of life and flourishing. At least one author defines happiness as contentment. Some commentators focus on the difference between the hedonistic tradition of seeking pleasant and avoiding unpleasant experiences, and the eudaimonic tradition of living life in a full and deeply satisfying way.

But how on earth can we find something if we do not know what it is? A blind search can only be successful through chance and coincidence, and this is what happiness is for most people: Something we strive for blindly, trying different things, and occasionally, for transitory moments we can actually experience it. However, repeating the experience by bringing the same elements that seemed to have caused it before doesn’t seem to work! Furthermore, everybody has diverging and fuzzy opinions about it. We know very well what does not bring us happiness, but what does? And what exactly is it?

If you would like to find out, just try an experiment for a moment. Close your eyes and remember a moment when you felt happy, maybe when you were making love for the first time with a beloved, looking upon the face of your newborn or the joy of your toddlers playing joyfully; maybe it was because of an achievement, whether physical like climbing a mountain or maybe like the creation of a work of Art, maybe through a great insight, a moment of inspiration, anything.

Feel the moment and remember; did you feel like anything was missing, that something was needed or was bothering you, were you feeling or thinking that something had to be added or removed from the experience? Did anything need to change, wasn´t everything exactly as it should be? The first time I heard this I closed my eyes and tried the exact same experiment. I went to every moment of my life that I remembered being really happy, that I actually had said to myself that I feel happy and found out that all my diverse moments of feeling happy had only one thing in common: That they shared the feeling that everything, absolutely everything was as it should be. Yes, sometimes there was intense joy, sometimes a sweet melancholy, others elation, pride, fulfilment. Sometimes I was ecstatic and exuberant, sometimes relaxed and peaceful; the only commonality was this pervasive feeling that everything, absolutely everything was deliciously, magically, amazingly as it should be: not perfect but spectacularly, obviously and simply as it should be; no more, no less!

Think about it for a moment; any moment of happiness is engulfed by the feeling that everything, absolutely everything is exactly, deliciously as it should be. Nothing is missing, nothing is superfluous, and nothing frightens us because everything is simply and wonderfully as it should be.

Theoretically, there is absolutely no reason for any human being to not want to be happy, enthusiastic, inspired, creative, bold, fearless; at peace. Peace with our nature and the nature of the world around us.

So entertain this thought for a moment:

Item one: Happiness is the only valid purpose of life, being, as Aristotle rationally deduced, the only goal that can be an end by itself and not a stepping stone or a way to another. The reason we would want anything else, the source.

Item two: The feeling of happiness is characterized by the total belief, the conviction and absolute trust at the moment that everything, absolutely everything is exactly, intricately, deliciously as it should be, regardless of where that happiness had sprung from.

Item three: Thoughts, feelings and emotions are determined by our belief system, the backbone of which is our philosophical perceptual point, our chosen, unchallenged assumptions and sets of beliefs.

Item four: Happiness is a stance, a way of perceiving our lives and a way of functioning accordingly. Thus, happiness is derived from a philosophical position and approach to life, one that satisfies all criteria and aspects of our existence, including physical pleasures but not dominated by them.

Does it now not become simple, intuitive and obvious that all we need to do to achieve the purpose of life, happiness, the only pursuit that is an end by itself and not a gateway or springboard to something else, is to adopt, engrave and install a belief system that assumes that everything is as it should be, regardless of circumstances and events? And then, of course, to choose to live accordingly. A belief system whose purpose is unashamedly the Holy Grail for humanity: Happiness, no less. The constant sense of peace, serenity and awe at how everything around us is amazingly exactly as it should be.

And actually, it works same as chemicals: for example, you shoot adrenalin into your body, you get aggressive, so your body shoots adrenalin into you. Cause and effect, effect and cause, they are one, inextricably connected like the chicken and the egg. One thing feeds and is nurtured by the other while being consumed in turn; the symbol of the Uroboros, the tail eating snake. It is consumed and giving birth to its consumer at the same time. Inextricably connected and interdependent, like all of nature.

So, if we are happy, we feel the absolute certainty, the absolute trust at the moment that things are exactly as they should be. Not only that, but we feel it emotionally, physically, symbolically, sensually, energetically, intellectually and, of course, philosophically. When we are crazy, ecstatically in reciprocated love we find nothing wrong about our lives, ourselves or the world around is. Our internal arguments are uncontested; the world and everything is wonderfully as it should be because SHE or HE is in it! No argument can hold ground for us, because we do not care to be convinced otherwise.

What then if we turn effect into cause, condition ourselves to believe that everything is as it should be whatever happens, would that stimulate the chemicals of happiness to flow in our bodies, would it make all of our dimensions, all of our organs feel actual happiness? Well, I propose, supported by the collective knowledge of humanity and simple observation of myself and all others, that it would and that it does, as long as it involves shifts in other dimensions as well, the most crucial of which are the symbolic and the intellectual. In this case, our other layers of functionality would follow suit, the same way our emotional bodies are pushed, shoved into compliance by drugs, events or thoughts.

I know this is so, because not only have I successfully achieved it myself to a high and ever increasing degree, but others have done so as well, to varying degrees, but conclusively and undeniably. It is still early days in the experimentation of this concept, but results are thus far spectacular. The more you engrave, the better it works as your body acquires the habit and tendency of the new state of being. Like any habit of the body, philosophical and intellectual “habits” take time to engrave through exposure and repetition; but once they are there, they become automatic and require no further consciousness or effort to exist, like breathing, digestion or walking.

But do you have to take anybody’s word for this? Of course not. You already know it yourself! Maybe you remember how hard it was to balance on a bicycle or how hard was learning to balance the clutch and the gas in a manual transmission car without stalling; all of these actions eventually end up happening automatically, naturally, easily handled by our subconscious. Like eating, walking or brushing our teeth.

And how about the way we feel and react in front of an audience or a new lover after we have done it numerous times and have different beliefs about our capabilities on the subject? Or how about the effect of coaches psyching up their teams, changing sometimes their philosophical stance from losers to champions? Do you not recognize that? Doesn´t cocaine make people feel as confident and invincible as familiarity, success and acceptance, thus affecting everything that they and people around them feel?

There is a song that says “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you are with...”

So, if you cannot find what makes you happy, what about teaching your body and your subconscious mind to be happy with what you’ve got?

Happiness is the feeling that everything, absolutely everything is exactly, deliciously as it should be, so what if we can engrave programming that gives us this feeling automatically regardless of circumstances?

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Comments

  1. Believing that everything is exactly, intricately, deliciously as it should be, must be very comforting. I’d like a belief-system like that for myself. But how can you make yourself believe that, considering that there are personal and global problems?

  2. Author

    Thank you for this comment. Your beliefs are your choice, and if you wish to be happy, the only way is to train yourself to believe and feel that everything is exactly as it should be. How can you do this, in view of global and personal problems? Easy! If you examine all global problems, such as war, oppression, poverty, violence, corruption, pollution, insufficient social care, inadequate education, people’s rights etc. etc., you will see that each one of these problems is much better today than at any time in the past. Our civilization is evolving at an amazing pace, and the only way to be blind to it is if you actively want to be miserable and in anxiety (which most people do!). Just a century or two ago, war was an everyday way of life, there was NO social security, NO education system apart from the nobility and the elite, NO human rights, NO protection from rape, violence etc. and none of the things you consider as problems. People did not even consider it an issue to pollute and slavery was legal in most countries in the world. It is not about the position the world is in, it is about the direction our civilization is going towards and all you have to do is take a glance at the amazing strides of human civilization in every possible field of existence. You think racial, sexual, ethnic discrimination is a global problem? Just a couple of centuries ago women and indigenous people had no rights, could not vote and it was officially debated whether they had souls!
    Nothing is ever going to be “perfect”, A. Because there are different opinions about the best way to do things depending on culture and other choices and B. Because we will keep constantly improving and evolving.
    As for your personal problems, if your direction is one of gradually solving them your life will be getting better and better, and when you solve all the issues that bother you now you will inevitably discover new ones because, like human civilization you will be wanting to evolve and improve constantly. Perfection is a curse, because if you find what you consider the “perfect you” and the “perfect life” you will suffer a fate worse than death, because you will have to be inanimate, frozen, since something perfect is something that should not change, lest it loses its perfection. Life is change and evolution, and this is exactly, deliciously as it should be!

  3. Great article and thanks. Here is my take on what happiness is. Happiness is harmony, harmony within our self, harmony with our environment, and harmony with our purpose for living. The core of lasting happiness is learning to really love our self. And this has benefits that cannot be overstated. In this way, I have happiness working for me instead of me working for happiness. In fact, in April 2018, I will celebrate 10 years of no anger, no frustration and no stress. To my great surprise, we can end unhappiness for good! 🙂

    1. Author

      Thank you for your comment. The definition that happiness is the feeling that everything is exactly and deliciously as it should be, is useful, because it gives people something to aim for. Generalities and abstracts, like many descriptive types of harmony, only keep people confused and in the abstract. The article has to do with an exact definition that can help people achieve happiness. As such, I think that your comments are missing the point. Please read the article more carefully.

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