There was an international Happiness and Its Causes Conference in San Francisco last November. Experts from around the world came to express their opinions on how to find happiness. With the world in turmoil, the economic meltdown in the United States now affecting the global economy, incessant wars, terrorism, hunger, global warming, droughts, famine …, it’s no wonder that people everywhere are searching for a little comfort and happiness. Hence the Happiness and Its Causes Conference.
While it is safe to say that most people would rather be happy than sad if given the choice, to say that we should only pursue happiness suggests that it is somehow bad or wrong to be “sad”. Happiness is defined by sadness, and sadness is defined by happiness. You cannot know or experience real happiness until you have experienced sadness from which to compare it to. Happiness and sadness are both necessary parts of the human experience. They help to balance each other. If we were to focus on having only one emotion to the exclusion of the other, then we would be out of balance. This imbalance would cause other more dire problems for us. The pursuit of happiness is sort of like the drug addict or the alcoholic searching for the next high. The experience is transitory. After a while it takes an ever increasing larger amount of the drugs or alcohol to create the same sensation over and over again. When you think about it, the drug addict and the alcoholic are all “trying to be happy” by using an artificial stimulus.
The operative word is “trying”. When you are trying to be happy, you will never be truly happy because you will be comparing your experience with what you think it should be. In the back of your mind, you have a preconceived notion of what happiness should be like. You have made happiness into an artificial construct. You have grown up in a society where advertisers and marketing people tell you that happiness is vacationing in Hawaii or Europe, driving the latest sports car, buying the latest fashion clothing, etc. The list can go on and on. All this marketing hype is intended to make you spend money by telling you that you will be happy when you buy their products and services. The advertisers are trying to tell you that they know what happiness is and how you can get a piece of it. What they are really telling you is what actions you can take to make them really happy.
Real happiness cannot be measured by how much money you make or how many toys you own. Happiness can only be measured by how you feel inside about yourself. When people feel that they need to work at being happy (i.e., to pursue happiness), what they are really saying is that they want to find something to distract them from having to look inside of themselves for what they truly want. The true pursuit of happiness begins and ends by looking within yourself. So what are you doing in pursuit of your happiness?
March 16th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
Thanks for this reminder of truth. It is very easy to forget in the society and times of deprivation that we live in.
April 22nd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
Yes, you can pursuit happiness, but it is not from getting a bigger house, a flashier car or a younger wife. According to researcher in the field of “Positive Psychology”, we all have a genetically pre-determined happiness set point, that accounts for 50% of our degree of happiness. Then 10% of our happiness is attributed to difference in life circumstances and situation. This is the 60% that’s beyond our control. That leaves 40% of our capacity for happiness within our power to change. So the pursuit of happiness means working on that 40%. This is the list to follow if you want to work on the 40% that you have control over:
1. Express gratitude
2. Cultivate Optimism
3. Avoid over-thinking and social comparison
4. Practice acts of kindness (be the best person you can be)
5. Nurture social relationships
6. Develop strategies of coping
7. Learn to forgive
8. Increase “flow” experience (spend time doing what you like to do)
9. Savor life’s joys
10. Commit to your goals
11. Practice religion or spirituality
12. Take care of your body:exercise, meditate, act like a happy person
It is that simple.
April 27th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
Looking within ourselves through techniques such as meditation and other similar techniques does bring us to some extent a sense of peace, a sense of freedom, a sense of happiness and even for a few “enlightenment”. However, we are living in a very complex world. We cannot under-emphasize the well being, the happiness and comfort that material wealth has brought the world and the majority of us after the industrial revolutions. Since the majority of us do not live a simple, secluded life from this modern world, we indeed have to find that mental balance between the materialistic world and our inner worlds. Those of us who have the freedom to find this mental balance are very fortunate because still there is the majority of those who are living in sheer subsistence meaning a lack of food and shelters. Therefore, the pursuit of happiness is far from just “looking within”, but more urgently and importantly, one of finding the material well-beings for the daily lives of the less fortunate.
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:59 am
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May 11th, 2010 at 8:37 pm
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