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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: What is happiness?
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
I have started reading this book on the subject of being happy.
The author says that for most people, the most important element on path to happiness is working out what you actually believe happiness to be. Articulating our notions of happiness helps us to actually work towards it.
I am still working on my definition, but I think it probably involves cheerfulness, contentment with one’s lot, freedom from fear and anxiety, and the capacity to have an optimistic outlook on the future.
Anyway, I thought I’d throw it out there for the opinions of the ship – what is (true) happiness?
As a secondary question, I am also musing on the idea of “joy” as taught in churches. The usual line I have heard is something like “happiness depends on circumstances, joy doesn’t”, but thinking more about this, I am not entirely convinced. Also, the more I consider it, I was taught that the “joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my heart, down in my heart todaaaay” didn’t depend on my circumstances, but I’m rather fuzzier on where exactly it was supposed to come from or, perhaps more precisely, how I was meant to go about acquiring it. And like I said, I’m not at all sure that it’s a separate thing from real, enduring happiness.
Your thoughts? What is happiness? Is it different to joy?
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
Shipmate
# 76
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Posted
This joy/happiness thing is just a fudge to get around the obvious fact that Christianity does not, in and of itself, result in Joy. Maybe it's meant to, but it doesn't, obviously. Better to face that fact and work it out rather than redefining joy to something that's called "deep" but is actually completely meaningless which is what is apparently preferred in some places.
Denial isn't a river in Africa.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Boogie
Boogie on down!
# 13538
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
I am still working on my definition, but I think it probably involves cheerfulness, contentment with one’s lot, freedom from fear and anxiety, and the capacity to have an optimistic outlook on the future.
I agree and would include freedom from stress. It's not until you find a stress-free life that you realise how valuable this is!
I would say having enough time to enjoy life, without having so much time you're bored.
Having a 'reason to be' is very important too. When I retired I became a puppy walker for Guide Dogs - it has taken over my life and I love every minute!
I would include in that being useful to others and making a contribution - we often only miss that aspect when it's taken away (by retirement, illness etc)
Realising that the chores need doing (so that you don't have to live in a midden) but that they are unimportant and should take second place to almost everything.
Good company when you want it and solitude when you need it contribute to happiness too.
Enjoying the moment instead of hankering after the next - always worth achieving, but easier said than done!
Church contributes little to my happiness, except that some of that good company comes from there. God doesn't contribute at all - in fact s/he just confuses the issue imo.
[ 04. February 2015, 09:56: Message edited by: Boogie ]
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Garden. Room. Walk
Posts: 13030 | From: Boogie Wonderland | Registered: Mar 2008
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quetzalcoatl
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# 16740
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Posted
I don't understand how defining happiness, produces it. For me, it is spontaneous, and can happen at any time, in any circumstance, sometimes the most mundane. One of the happiest times of my life was watching a cockerel walk across a lawn on a farm, it was sheer beauty and poetry. I hadn't planned it and I can't replicate it!
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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Raptor Eye
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# 16649
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Posted
I do differentiate beween happiness and joy, seeing happiness as transitory pleasure, while joy is a deep and permanent contentment. The opposite of the former would be sorrow or misery, while the opposite of the latter would be despair.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Heavenly Anarchist
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# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
I don't understand how defining happiness, produces it. For me, it is spontaneous, and can happen at any time, in any circumstance, sometimes the most mundane. One of the happiest times of my life was watching a cockerel walk across a lawn on a farm, it was sheer beauty and poetry. I hadn't planned it and I can't replicate it!
I'm with you, I can find joy in all sorts of things, mundane or otherwise. I love watching insects or people's expressions or hearing conversations, all sorts of things. I just find life fascinating and I was like this long before I became a Christian in my 20s. I was once criticised in a nursing student appraisal for smiling too much! I'm not sure how joy can be taught, though I suppose learning to slow down and observe might help.
I do agree about stress though, anxiety is a killer to joy, IMO.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
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Heavenly Anarchist
Shipmate
# 13313
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
I do differentiate beween happiness and joy, seeing happiness as transitory pleasure, while joy is a deep and permanent contentment. The opposite of the former would be sorrow or misery, while the opposite of the latter would be despair.
I see happiness as a more general state of mind whilst I consider joy to be a more spontaneous reactive thing. But I mostly agree with your opposites, happiness with sorrow, joy with despair. The latter appear more extreme and deep but also more transient to me.
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'I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.' Douglas Adams
Dog Activity Monitor
My shop
Posts: 2831 | From: Trumpington | Registered: Jan 2008
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que sais-je
Shipmate
# 17185
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Posted
Nietzsche wrote "Mankind does not strive for happiness; only the Englishman does that." Now it isn't just the English and once it wasn't even them.
In Middle English, 'happ' means chance or fortune (per-haps, happen-stance, hap-hazard and so on). The emphasis used to be that happiness was not something you could develop a strategy for getting - it was down to luck (if it happens).
Mostly I'd agree with Boogie. I do stuff I find satisfying, and try to avoid stuff I don't. Satisfaction leads to happiness, it's a by-product not something to be sought directly.
If I'm lucky it makes me happy at the time, but sometimes that comes later.
Many years ago I spent a year working full-time in a shelter for the homeless. I don't remember feeling very happy (mostly scared - some of the residents weren't nice people), but looking back I'm glad I did it. Better than a year spend looking for happiness?
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"controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity" (Thomas Browne)
Posts: 794 | From: here or there | Registered: Jun 2012
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Karl: Liberal Backslider
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# 76
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Posted
Problem is I have to do a lot of the stuff I don't find satisfying (work) to fund doing the stuff I do.
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Might as well ask the bloody cat.
Posts: 17938 | From: Chesterfield | Registered: May 2001
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Eliab
Shipmate
# 9153
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
This joy/happiness thing is just a fudge to get around the obvious fact that Christianity does not, in and of itself, result in Joy. Maybe it's meant to, but it doesn't, obviously. Better to face that fact and work it out rather than redefining joy to something that's called "deep" but is actually completely meaningless which is what is apparently preferred in some places.
While I do find the Christian joy/happiness cliche deeply irritating and banal, I'm not convinced it is entirely fudge. There is a sense in which Christian faith can (though is not guaranteed to) provide an abiding sub-emotional sort of comfort.
Two illustrations (one negative):
It's possible to be both depressed and happy. The experience of depression in its less extreme manifestations doesn't entirely block out all pleasant sensations and relationships, and similarly, the pleasure of food, or music, or friendship can be very real, but still not do much to block out the vast aching blackness over which it seems temporarily to be suspended.
Imagine something similar in reverse - temporary miseries that are real, and painful, but which do not block out an underlying contentment or faith.
My second illustration is the joy of being a parent. I have two children whom I love. That fact doesn't prevent me from having a bad day at work, or an argument with my wife, or health worries, or a crap time generally, but through all of it, I'm still the father of two people in whom I delight, and could honestly say that I would not trade places with any other man in creation because of that. I don't necessarily feel happy, but still I judge my life to be preferable to any other because of those instances of love.
Similarly, it is possible for a Christian to believe and feel that even though his or her life is currently distressing and painful, it is still better to know God, and be miserable, than be someone happier, who did not know him.
I wouldn't personally call that feeling "joy" (because it is damn-all like the exuberent emotions which usually go by that name), but it's something real and worth having. What I hate are the implied suggestions that such an experience will necessarily be pleasant (it's not), or that its an automatic consequence of faith (it isn't), or that there's something wrong with me or my commitment to Christ if I happen to be unhappy and not feeling it (who knows that?).
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"Perhaps there is poetic beauty in the abstract ideas of justice or fairness, but I doubt if many lawyers are moved by it"
Richard Dawkins
Posts: 4619 | From: Hampton, Middlesex, UK | Registered: Mar 2005
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Lamb Chopped
Ship's kebab
# 5528
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Posted
That deep underground joy/happiness is something I recognize, yes. I'm going to call it joy only because I can't think of a better word. It can and does coexist with absolute misery, which is really weird.
A lot of you know the hell that has been my life for the last ten years or so. Who am I kidding? for a helluva lot longer than that. Most recently it's included abuse at work, firing (just when we could afford it least), major surgeries and crap at church--all on top of each other. Oh, and two deaths in the family. And serious problems for my son.
And yet when I was talking with my husband, as you do, and asked him if he would trade his life for someone else's--he said no. He loved his life, he had overriding joy in it--and so do I. Even though I'm under treatment for major depression and anxiety at the same time.
I don't know what the psychologists would make of this.
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Er, this is what I've been up to (book).
Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down!
Posts: 20059 | From: off in left field somewhere | Registered: Feb 2004
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Firenze
Ordinary decent pagan
# 619
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
The author says that for most people, the most important element on path to happiness is working out what you actually believe happiness to be. Articulating our notions of happiness helps us to actually work towards it.
Couldn't disagree more. Happiness is a by-product. The moment you wonder whether you are happy enough, you're not. Ditto engineering the circumstances in which you expect to be happy.
As a child, my SiL always said she preferred Boxing Day - because you didn't have to feel happy.
Posts: 17302 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Jun 2001
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
Firenze
Brilliant example. That reminds me of my old Sufi friend who used to say that trying was the pathway to hell. But how does one stop?
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
Posts: 9878 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2011
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
The problem here is that "happy", like many words in English, has an imprecise meaning. We have a variety of words meaning "happy", more or less. If you say you are happy, do you mean that you are content, carefree, elated, serene, or just not unhappy?
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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ProgenitorDope
Apprentice
# 16648
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Posted
I can't speak to joy, but there's a quote from the end of "The Count of Monte Cristo" that I thought defined happiness pretty well.
"There is no such thing as happiness. But nor is there sadness. There exists only different states of being and the happiness or sadness one feels within these states is a result of comparing the present, the past and a potential future."
I can't remember how Dumas phrased the rest, but I remember it was essentially "You can't really smile until you shed some tears."
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no prophet's flag is set so...
Proceed to see sea
# 15560
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Posted
I know for certain certain dates and times and places I was happy. Not so much at the time. Some of those times involved people, some just me and wilderness. None of them involved money or possessions. Some of them involved food and drink. I think of of what a fellow Saskatonian wrote: 'don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you got til it's gone'. Then I think what a Saskatoon boy said 'You get your happiness where you can. You reach a point where you're at the bottom of hell, yet you have your arms crossed and a smile on your face, and you feel you're the luckiest person on earth. Why? Because at your feet you have a tiny dead fish.'
So I pay attention as much as I can and try to live in the present.
(The first quote is Joni Mitchell, the second Yann Martel)
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Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.
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Galloping Granny
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# 13814
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Posted
The US Declaration of Independence says citizens are entitled to 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. This has always bothered me, on the grounds that you can't achieve happiness by pursuing it.
GG
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The Kingdom of Heaven is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. Gospel of Thomas, 113
Posts: 2629 | From: Matarangi | Registered: Jun 2008
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
The author says that for most people, the most important element on path to happiness is working out what you actually believe happiness to be. Articulating our notions of happiness helps us to actually work towards it.
Couldn't disagree more. Happiness is a by-product. The moment you wonder whether you are happy enough, you're not. Ditto engineering the circumstances in which you expect to be happy.
As a child, my SiL always said she preferred Boxing Day - because you didn't have to feel happy.
I dunno. I was going to agree with the idea. But perhaps in a less engineered way and in a more organic way.
If you look back to when you felt happy and try structure your life around similar circumstances you may be seeking something good.
I feel happy around friends and family and Church and helping others and theology and my garden and running and sport. I try structure my life around that when I can. Perhaps it's more about seeking things that matter than things that don't.
[ 05. February 2015, 09:51: Message edited by: Evensong ]
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
Extended periods of feelings of lightness and quiet love.
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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la vie en rouge
Parisienne
# 10688
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Firenze:
quote:
Originally posted by la vie en rouge:
The author says that for most people, the most important element on path to happiness is working out what you actually believe happiness to be. Articulating our notions of happiness helps us to actually work towards it.
Couldn't disagree more. Happiness is a by-product. The moment you wonder whether you are happy enough, you're not. Ditto engineering the circumstances in which you expect to be happy.
As a child, my SiL always said she preferred Boxing Day - because you didn't have to feel happy.
I guess my point, though, is that whether or not happiness is achievable does depend on what one considers happiness to be. I think part of the reason I am drawn to the notion of contentment is that it looks to me like a thing that can indeed be cultivated – by being grateful for the good things you have, not making constant negative comparisons with others and so on.
On the other hand, if happiness depends on external factors, then there’s nothing you can do about it, which I am bummed about, because I like the idea of being happy.
A while ago I read something (can’t for the life of me remember where) about how most people have a sort of baseline level of well-being. This is how happy you are when there’s nothing much going on out of the ordinary. Certain good or bad events may push us away from this average point, but over time we tend to revert to the mean. So, if there’s a scale of happy going from one to ten and I am usually a 5, then something very nice happens (enjoyable holiday, unexpected pay rise…) I may go up to 8 for a while. On the other hand, if there is some very unpleasant event (lose a job, romantic break-up, bereavement…), I may go down to 2. But in both cases, as time goes by, I am likely to gradually drift back to where I started off – a baseline happiness level of 5. What I am wondering is whether you can do anything about your baseline “nothing much going on today” level of emotional well-being.
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Rent my holiday home in the South of France
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
I started to think differently about this when I came across the HeartMath training - the question they ask is - "how do you know that you feel happy/"good"? The answer is that it is not a mental state - it's an embodied state. i..e in computer programming jargon, "happiness" and other emotional terms are a high level language, whereas physical sensations are the machine code - the real 0's and 1's of experience that we interpret into a symbolic higher level language. If this symbolic language is divorced form the physical sensations it originated from then it becomes conceptual and we begin to distort it by thinking. And also have little understanding of how it occurs other than by accident. The sensations come first, the mental chatter and the ideas/concepts come second - and the mental response then creates either a positive or negative feedback loop, this reinforcing or deleting the originating sensual information. If one is aware of how thoughts and spoken words (or even thoughts about possibly speaking certain things) and gestures affect the somatic internal state, then it becomes easy to identify what makes us happy and what makes us unhappy.
[ 05. February 2015, 10:28: Message edited by: itsarumdo ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Stercus Tauri
Shipmate
# 16668
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Posted
I've always enjoyed Mme De Gaulle's anecdotal problem with happiness - scroll down about half way.
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Thay haif said. Quhat say thay, Lat thame say (George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal)
Posts: 905 | From: On the traditional lands of the Six Nations. | Registered: Sep 2011
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HCH
Shipmate
# 14313
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Posted
Sometimes you don't know you are happy (whatever that means) until afterward. (The same can be true of sadness. We are just not very observant.)
Posts: 1540 | From: Illinois, USA | Registered: Nov 2008
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Martin60
Shipmate
# 368
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Posted
The key to it is gratitude.
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Love wins
Posts: 17586 | From: Never Dobunni after all. Corieltauvi after all. Just moved to the capital. | Registered: Jun 2001
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Evensong
Shipmate
# 14696
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Posted
The Happiness bizzo does seem to be in the popular media a lot these days. Perhaps because we seem to be increasingly miserable as a (western) society even tho our material wealth has increased.
There's a 75 year old in the making Harvard study that prattles on about love. ![[Biased]](wink.gif)
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a theological scrapbook
Posts: 9481 | From: Australia | Registered: Apr 2009
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Evangeline
Shipmate
# 7002
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Posted
Berkely have a centre for "the science of happiness" including an online course that goes through research into happiness, definitions, ways to improve happiness and a whole load of other stuff. You may be interested in taking a look.
The Science of Happiness
Posts: 2871 | From: "A capsule of modernity afloat in a wild sea" | Registered: May 2004
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Belle Ringer
Shipmate
# 13379
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Martin60:
The key to it is gratitude.
Yes, gratitude is a key tool.
I have been fascinated by the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system duality. The first is stress fight-or-flight adrenaline, the second is positive confidence and the hormones that nurture the body and brain with healing and renewal from the wear and blows of life. Apparently you are in one of these states or the other.
We live in an adrenaline addicted society, a stressed, fight-or-flight, over-stimulated society of too little sleep, drugs to keep us alert (caffeine), "news" geared to alarm us so we'll buy the newspaper, "entertainment" of gun battles and buildings blowing up or carnival rides that pretend to threaten our lives by going upside down or sharp turns.
The body in fight-or-flight does not properly digest food and does not properly repair.
Gratitude is one way of shutting down the adrenaline. Positive thinking, pleasant experiences - taking the time to enjoy a tasty meal, to notice the sunset, reducing clutter to have a visually attractive environment, doing creative art, helping someone else (with no motive of being thanked), fasting (I recently read) turns off adrenaline (unless you are fretting about lack of food or about meeting someone else's standards).
Treat your body well by seeking to turn off adrenaline and turn on relaxed self repair by intentionally seeking positive thoughts and pleasant experiences and beauty, and you become emotionally happier and physically healthier. So says the current research.
Here's a study showing clinically tested effectiveness of the "three good things" exercise in improving emotional state, not just a few minutes' effect but several months.
The exercise is, each evening (right before bed is best), write down three things that went well that day, and for each something that helped cause it to happen. The experiment was every day for one week. Result: "three good things increased happiness and decreased depressive symptoms for six months."
Yup, gratitude, not the only way but an important way to happiness.
If
people have 3:1
positive
to
negative
emotions they flourish in life and live 8 to 10 years longer, says this web page. That makes sense because they are allowing their body to do lots of self repair instead of shutting off healing by keeping the adrenaline turned on.
A free course on business leadership is what introduced me to the parasympathetic nervous system, and intentional ways to turn it on. (Coursera.com, Inspiring Leadership through Emotional Intelligence, the course runs about every two months.)
Posts: 5830 | From: Texas | Registered: Jan 2008
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itsarumdo
Shipmate
# 18174
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Posted
If we feel gratitude, it's impossible at that moment not to feel happy
[code]
[ 07. February 2015, 11:48: Message edited by: Eutychus ]
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"Iti sapis potanda tinone" Lycophron
Posts: 994 | From: Planet Zog | Registered: Jul 2014
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Horseman Bree
Shipmate
# 5290
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Posted
And now for another view: Omid Safi: "Religion cannot promise happiness"
Happiness is possible, but, as the American Declaration says, can only be "pursued", not guaranteed, and joy is even more spontaneous.
Religious teaching can lead to "contentment", which comes from a conscious effort of self-understanding within the context you live in. Contentment recognises that there are problems, which can be ignored, worked around or just lived with: happiness is more ephemeral, because quite small things can interrupt it. Of course, contentment may lead to happiness, in terms that one can decide to be happy rather than glum - again, from conscious effort.
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It's Not That Simple
Posts: 5372 | From: more herring choker than bluenose | Registered: Dec 2003
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Arabella Purity Winterbottom
Trumpeting hope
# 3434
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Posted
I've been trying to work this out myself, as I've entered a period of feeling very happy over the last 7-8 years. I agree with Martin that gratitude plays a huge part, but the other side of that is getting rid of the sneaky forms of greed that get in the way.
By that I mean greed to be recognised, greed to be the first and best, greed to determine what is right and wrong, etc. I wouldn't say I'd got rid of greed and pride completely, but working on it has made me happier than I've ever been. And yes, you may hear echoes of Zen Buddhism in there.
I'm in a stressful job, with lots of home stress, but I'm still happier than I've ever been.
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Hell is full of the talented and Heaven is full of the energetic. St Jane Frances de Chantal
Posts: 3702 | From: Aotearoa, New Zealand | Registered: Oct 2002
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Makepiece
Shipmate
# 10454
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Posted
For me the beatitudes tell me everything that I need to achieve happiness. The OP mentions that we need to work out what we mean by happiness. For me happiness is peace, and by peace I mean freedom from conflict with man and God as well as contentment and thankfulness for what I have. Of course this means that happiness, for me, must be broader than simply the achievement of my own self centred goals and must also include God's glory and the welfare of others. I'm not saying that I've achieved happiness, I often hunger for fish and chips as much as I hunger for righteousness.
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Don't ask for whom the bell tolls...
Posts: 938 | From: Nottingham | Registered: Sep 2005
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