Happiness is the journey; not the destination. It is your choice; not the reward you get from someone else. Happiness comes and goes. It’s part of human nature. But it’s my mission never to neglect myself and always to go in the direction of my happiness. I try to maintain as much in-the-moment short-term happiness as possible while still keeping the long-term in mind. I cannot say I have been happy in my life completely. The journey of it has not been a beauty. I do not put my happiness with anyone but the loneliness begets the reality for tangible feelings for it.
Happiness being in the moment and enjoying your surroundings. Longing for someone or something to fill oneself is nothing but wishing and hope. Knowing self worth and not trying to prove it is happiness. Living in serenity and trying to make life better for others will fulfill one with pleasure, but only if nothing is even remotely expected in return.
Happiness is intrinsic to and in our original, natural state of being. We have been programmed out of it. To return we need to heal the hurt and fear and understand how we lost something that is ever present. Happiness is only a thought, striving for it makes me happy but I know it will never be obtained.
I’m happy and cheerful by nature, but go through bouts of depression severe enough to stop me from functioning until it lifts. Without depression in the equation, I find happiness is a combination of circumstance; strong sense of self, enthusiasm about life and the ability to love and connect with others. It helps if your material desires are modest.
Happiness. It’s always there. You just have to appreciate things. Grateful is harder to strive than happiness I think. For me happiness is when pain and pleasure are balanced. Guess we all have different times in our lives, times of peace, and also hard times and lot of pain. During this time, I learned to appreciate a nice cup of tea and every tiny kindness showed. And I’m happy for seconds. If you strive for happiness all you’re doing is striving and when it has reached the destination, the only thing left to be enjoyed is exhaustion.
I think that for someone to be "happy," they first have to be content with how their life is playing out. It’s important for people to realize that they only have so much control in the grand scheme of things, and accepting that everything (even though times) happens as it should, will let a person be free of the stress of trying to make things perfect. Once free of that unneeded stress will allow them to feel happiness more often.
Happiness is when I’m pursuing that which I am passionate about. It is not something temporary whereby once achieved I would get bored of it. It grows with me, or me with it. I am not close to it unfortunately, but I can honestly say I am the closest I have been in a long time.
There is growing awareness of the need to distinguish between two types of happiness. 1) Experiential happiness, in which one feels happy in the moment. 2) Reflective happiness, which is tied to memory, and occurs whenever one looks back on their life and judges how happy they are with it. Because looking back on one’s life involves only looking back on memories, it is easy to judge that one was happy even though that time in your life experimentally unhappy.
I personally feel very happy with my life whenever I look back on it and remember achievements and experiences. Strangely happiness can only seem to be realized long after the moment occurred, we cannot easily realize whether that moment was a happy one without reflecting on it after it has already passed. There is a kind of disconnect between the contemplation and each moment.
Describing an emotion is tricky. What is anger? What is happiness? It’s difficult putting into words. "Chemical reactions," yes well…that’s true. But what do they mean, these reaction? What do they mean to you, what is the essence of these emotions? You can’t just put what love is in a neat bag and call it "chemical reactions," even if it is true, objectively. It’s more than that. What is it being human? “Being a carbon-based mammal.” It’s just meaningless. It’s correct, but meaningless. And not the whole truth. Describing an emotion in words is like describing a color to a blind person. It can’t really be done. Although you can come close.
Happiness equals quiet … right now. It’s quiet.
