Clarifying Happiness

Happiness... another one of the esoteric concepts that rests in people's minds, today.

Many people have many different versions of what they consider to be "happiness". Some say that happiness is when you're feeling "pretty good" and nothing's worrying you. Some say that happiness occurs when you're really involved in an activity you enjoy. Some say that happiness is a blissful experience, only reachable through drugs. Some say that true happiness is a myth and that everyone is fundamentally miserable.

Indeed, how would you ever define something that seems to be a subjective experience?

To begin, you need to differentiate happiness from other states of mind.

First off, happiness is not received externally. PLEASURE can be received externally, but not happiness. People will talk about how eating makes them happy, or sex makes them happy or movies make them happy, but all of these things are just stimulating. Happiness is not something you DO, it's something you ARE. It's not something you get, but something you generate.

How do we "generate" happiness?

Happiness is the result of living in alignment with a clearly-defined value system that is based in reality. This is no small feat, and it is the reason why most people strive to "achieve" happiness (which is impossible) through external stimulation. To delude yourself into thinking that happiness is something you "get", means that you don't have to deal with the responsibility of introspection. What the person actually receives, however, is transitory pleasure and a background feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness.

Now, is there anything wrong with receiving pleasure from external sources? Absolutely not. There is a lot of value in the various pleasures available to us. The problem is not the desire to seek pleasure, but to escape reality. When pleasure is seen as the ideal state of existence in life, you are left with hedonism and nihilism, which naturally go together.

Then what IS happiness, if it isn't pleasure?

Happiness is a state of being where you feel a profound, guilt-free love for your own existence. When you're happy, you feel an immense desire for adventure and excitement. You naturally set goals for yourself and strive to achieve everything possible to you in life. You push the limits of your mind to their fullest potential in creative pursuits. It's like this infinite enthusiasm that is bursting out of you, compelling you to action. When untamed, it feels like a fire inside that you want to express to the world. When tamed, you learn to focus it like a laser on projects that inspire you and draw upon all of your abilities. In essence, it is the feeling of being ALIVE.

Now... compare THAT to the feeling you get when, say, eating a slice of pizza.

Exactly.

It becomes easy to see the difference between happiness and pleasure, and the idea that happiness could never possibly be received externally.

The first step is to stop placing pleasure above everything else as the ultimate ideal in life. Pleasure is great, but it's one of the lesser aspects of life. It's something you want to experience during the rest periods. The real joy of life comes from knowing what your values are and living in alignment with them, knowing what you want in life and going after it.