Happiness The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet -James Oppenheim As I gaze out the window in my room, my curiosity keeps me there, wondering what it is that makes a person smile. Do they smile because they are genuinely happy Or because they just heard a funny joke Maybe their smile is just a mask, used to conceal their pathetic, lonely reality. Through speculation and interviews, I have been able to untangle the uncertainty of meaning true happiness. Happiness has no limits, for it can be felt at any time, any place, to any person. A personal experience, confined to the person and moment it belongs.
Many people chase happiness, thinking of it as pleasure or riches. However, it is elusive until we stop looking for it. Happiness is not pleasure, for pleasure is an end in itself. It is something that is hunted for. Happiness cannot be hunted for; it is not obvious, but inscrutable. It confronts us in infinite forms.
The idea that happiness is the one ultimate good is known as hedonism 1 The hedonists believe pleasure is the highest goal attainable in life, and can be found through outside influences. They are forgetting that there is much more to happiness than what can be seen. For example, it is possible for a millionaire to be unhappy, despite the amount of money in their bank account, while at the same time a hermit may be happy under the most miserable circumstances. Although money may bring an immediate sense of pleasure to a person, it does not produce the stability that is associated with true happiness. Pleasure may help a person avoid the detractors that cause unhappiness, but it does not produce the stability that is associated with true happiness. Happiness is realized by understanding ones self, whic is completely a personal experience.
The Essay on Pleasures Human Mill Happiness Pleasure
Along with other noted philosophers, John Stuart Mill developed the nineteenth century philosophy known as Utilitarianism - the contention that man should judge everything in life based upon its ability to promote the greatest individual happiness. While Bentham, in particular, is acknowledged as the philosophy's founder, it was Mill who justified the axiom through reason. He maintained that ...
For instance, a person may find happiness in one thing, whereas someone else may in another; or both may find it happy in the same thing, but for different reasons. Written in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson is the immortal phrase Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Life is eternal, and liberty is an inalienable right. However, we are only offered the right to pursue happiness. A person can be given liberty but not happiness because it is not an outward excursion of the soul, but an inward invasion. Today we live in a world that is constantly seeking for happiness.
People have a mania about being happy and it has turned into a national hobby. It is also a billion dollar business. Everywhere we turn someone has something that claims will make us happy. If we drink a certain beer, buy a certain car, wear a certain pair of pants, use a certain shampoo we are going to be happy. More often than not, people become blinded by the eye appealing advertisement, and begin to believe it may aide in their eternal quest towards happiness. We have passed down from generation to generation the belief that happiness can be attributed to external causes.
Weve been told that other people and the circumstances of our lives make us happy or unhappy. Thus, implying that happiness is outside ourselves. Happiness comes from the Old English word hap, which means something that happens. Happiness, then, happens. Happiness is what we let it to be. We can be happy, like the hermit, even if we are alone and in pain.
Happiness is not the absence of sadness or pain. We cannot make ourselves happy. It is elusive precisely until we stop looking for it. While we search for it, we are only chasing something we vaguely think to be happiness. Happiness is defined in Websters dictionary as a state well being and contentment or of pleasurable satisfaction. This definition makes happiness a state of the body.
True happiness is a spiritual state and can exist even when the body is utterly miserable. There is much more to happiness than feeling good or the gratification of sensual desires. Bodily contentment demands constant attention and replenishment, and soon wears off. Happiness is what we let it to be, and even though carry the ability to let ourselves be happy, we rarely do.
The Essay on Happiness Happy Makes Dog
Happiness cannot be defined for a group, no one has the same view of what happiness is. Where happiness can be defined as a chemical reaction in your brain, it is what you do and experience which makes you happy. The sum of those experiences and one's positive reaction to them defines happiness-and these experiences are unique for each person. The things that make me happy in my life can seem ...
