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What is happiness and how can we know we ARE TRULY happy?!

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ltdaleadergt
 
Reply Wed 25 Jun, 2008 08:21 am
Me and my two other best friends once again like every Wednesday night of the week gather together at the same old coffee shop setting on the same table 17having the same coffee/convo night like always. We talk about how our life is and various issues that question us! Tonight's topic was about me and my life!
I was not happy! I was not happy about how I study and how serious I was in my educational life! They argue that truly I am wrong since university and education is not really what we can and should consider as the true source of happiness. SO I asked what happiness how can I know I am happy is! Since I really don't feel happy no more! I sense that true happiness is hard to find in a systematic and predictable life! Living forces you to live the same routine and boring! But you don't realise it until some one confronts you about it! SO I ask what is happiness and how can we know whether what we do right now IS really what we wanted and what TRULY makes us happy!
Until now My HAPPINESS was making my family happy and fulfilling the dreams that they have on me! But I realised that is wrong since that is not the life I want but it is the life THAT they want from me and I am living their dreams not mine! Any of you guys have the same issue ? What do u do with it or what would you do about it? Thx
 
de budding
 
Reply Wed 25 Jun, 2008 10:18 am
@ltdaleadergt,
I feel for you,


"The Realisation of Wanting

The realisation of wanting is to discover and then learn to facilitate the objects & experiences which bring you temporary joy. It is the learning of how to facilitate that warps human perspective into a spotlight, searching- only fleetingly- in the future for those joys and then awaiting- in misery, them reaching the present. One who lives for experiences in this manner can forget the true skills of foresight and hindsight that they unknowingly manipulated into tools for finding their 'simple pleasures'."
-A little extract from something I wrote which I felt explained why happiness seems almost non-existent at times.

The gist was that happiness exists in the future only, as anticipation and excitement. As humans we get to like this and start dedicating ourselves to recognising pleasure in the future and aligning our lives so we coincide with said pleasure (anticipation/excitement comes from here... knowing we are aligned and ready to receive our package of happiness = happiness) - this is learning 'to facilitate the objects and experiences' of temporary joy... and it is temporary indeed. Eventually our perception of the happiness is warped somewhat and we become very selfish in this respect, searching in the future for our own pleasure and self validation very narrowly and not realising how non-existent the happiness is in the present now.

I think at some point it becomes impossible to know what makes us happy; when I'm busy I want to be alone and still, when I'm alone and still I'm board.

Happiness (when usually used) is anticipation and excitement. But existentialism thought encourages us to let go of that some what I think, by replacing it with duty and choice. Also you can view happiness as contentment which I think leads down a cynical path, by casting away all the values of life and living as a dog you are always content by being alive.

I wanted to write some more on this, I even came up with a title- 'Where is happiness?', but haven't got round to that yet. My advice is don't try to force happiness into a tight explosive ball in the present (a jump-of-joy) and don't entertain the urge to go around showing people how happy you are when you find some genuine satisfaction. I have practiced this (until now) by keeping my highest grade from my 2nd year at uni a secret, I am happy with it... why do I get an urge to ring my fellow students and tell him how well I did?

Dan.




 
 

 
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