This is a question that has not bothered me for a long time, precisely because I don’t know how to answer it.
Some people seem to be happy: they just do not think about it. Others make plans: “I’m going to have a husband, a home, two children, and a house in the country”. While this keeps them occupied, they are like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they don’t think, they just keep moving forward. They manage to get their car – sometimes even a Ferrari – and they think that the meaning of life lies there, so they never ask the question. Yet, despite all that, their eyes betray a sadness that they themselves are quite unaware of.
I don’t know if everyone is unhappy. I do know that people are always busy: working overtime, looking after the kids, the husband, the career, the university degree, what to do tomorrow, what they need to buy, whatever it is they need to have in order not to feel inferior, and so on.
Few people have ever told me: “I’m unhappy”. Most say: “I’m fine, I’ve managed to get all I ever wanted”.
So then I ask: “What makes you happy?”
They answer: “I have everything that a person can dream of – a family, a home, work, good health”.
I ask again: “Have you ever stopped to wonder if that is all there is to life?”
They answer: “Yes, that’s all there is”.
I insist: “So the meaning of life is work, the family, children who grow up and leave you, a wife or husband who will become more like a friend than a true love-mate. And one day the work will come to an end. What will you do when that happens?”
They answer: there is no answer. They change the subject. But there is always something hidden there: the owner of a firm who has still to close the deal he has always dreamed of, the housewife who would like to have more independence or more money, the new graduate who wonders whether he has chosen his career or has had it chosen for him, the dentist who wanted to be a singer, the singer who wanted to be a politician, the politician who wanted to be a writer, and the writer who wanted to be a peasant.
In this street where I am sit writing this column and looking at the people passing by, I bet that everyone is feeling the same thing. That elegant woman who has just walked by spends her days trying to stop time, controlling the bathroom scales, because she thinks love depends on that. On the other side of the street I see a couple with two children. They live moments of intense happiness when they go out with their kids, but at the same time their subconscious is busy thinking about the job they might not get, the tragedies that might occur, how to get over them, how to protect themselves from the world.
I leaf through magazines filled with famous people: everybody laughing, everybody very happy. But since this is a segment of society that I am quite familiar with, I know it is not like that: everyone is laughing or enjoying themselves at the moment that photo is taken, but at night, or in the morning, the story is always quite different. “What can I do to keep on appearing in the magazine?”, “how can I disguise not having enough money to afford all this luxury?” or “how can I manage this life of splendor to make it even more luxurious, more expressive than other people’s?”, “the actress whom I am seen with in this photo, laughing and having a great time, she could steal my part tomorrow!”, or “I wonder if my clothes are nicer than hers. Why do we smile so much if we loathe one another?”
To end, I recall the words of Jorge Luis Borges: “I will not be happy any more, but that doesn’t matter, / there are many other things in this world”.
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Happiness to me signifies a euphoric Peace of Mind example when we find the ability to control our thoughts in our mind a state of complete self sustaining contentment. When we accept who we are and disregard all false fallicies media and society has intented for us to follow. When we say to ourselves “Its okay I make mistakes and I will make more tomorrow but I accept myself and have a peace of mind of acceptance to who I am.”
Happiness is when we can truly accept the fortunes and misfortunes on this world and have a peace of mind. Happiness is accepting the beauty of who and what we will become.
penso alla felicita’ come ad uno stato di grazia.Ogni giorno,ogni attimo vive le sue felicita’e le sue tristezze.E’ vero, per ognuno di noi la felicita,’ non e’rapprasentata dalla stessa cosa,o emozione.A me piace viverla come quell’implosione ed esplosione d’amore,data da tutto cio’ che la provoca.
Today I did a similar thing.
I walked the streets of my home city Cape Town today, Sunday, observing the life around me.
The buildings, the streets, the businesses, the lights, the flower sellers, the beggars, the car guards, the young adults, the elderly, the children with their parents, the children without any parents, the pavements, the air, the smells, the sounds, the voices, the information scattered around in pieces that, when put together, reveal a magical puzzle of history, reality and destiny.
I have no spouse, no house, a financial savings of about 1000 South African Rand, I work part time and study part time. Today was a day of love, peace, joy, faith, hope, youth, wisdom, learning, teaching, singing, dancing, writing, imagination. Alone in my city, I was happy because I felt alive. I felt life, within me and all around me. :)
I have faith in humanity, and I believe with patient encouragement even the most conservative, unquestioning, and blinded souls will too discover the true joys of living.
A balanced life makes me the happiest. When our needs are all met, we are truly happy for as long as all our needs are met. the difficulty is, we don’t always know what our needs are, so we have to experiment and go in search of the ingredients in our own lives that gives us fulfilment. I believe that quite often the thing that we lacked in our childhood and the thing that we loved in our childhood both have the most potential to make us happy. If we were bullied in school, popularity will make us happy in adult life. If we came from a poor family, wealth and money will make us happy in adult life. If we loved to dance as children, then dancing will make us happy in adult life. I think also, we need to have human connection and love and support… without those crucial ingredients, we can never be happy. For the people who are not able to accept love (because their childhood did not teach them that they were worthy of being loved just as they are and for no reason other than just because they do deserve love) happiness will be the hardest to find of all. The ability to forgive is also vital to happiness. If we do not have the skill of forgiveness yet, we will carry all the anger and pain that we have ever been given around with us and even during times of celebration, we will not be happy.
So I think it is this that makes us happy:
Loving respectful healthy relationships
Having all of our individual specific needs met (physical, mental, emotional, health, moral, cultural, spiritual, freedom, time, self-control) We must learn about ourselves to know what we need first
Ability to give and accept love and healthy level of self esteem
Ability to heal past wounds with forgiveness of ourselves and others and also the world and God
Someone special to share our happiness with
Happoness seems most often described as a responce to stimulus. If there is a positive response to a stimulus, there would need be a negative one as well ? Waxing poetically,high, after much drink, and feel the pain, low, the next day. Is there a true state of stablness, contentment, or complete satisfaction, maybe bliss, that is available for us to grasp, to accept, to acknowledge, to simply surrender to ? Does this exist here and now, prior to action, prior to thought, prior to prior? Could we already be there?
“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything, thy make the best of everything.”
happiness truely lies in somthing which gives us total satisfaction irrespective of ones worth in the eyes o oda…bt smtyms mind is soo pre occupied with so many things its jus difficult thing to realise wat makes one truely happy n contented…and smtimes its also confusing tat if a particular thing is actually making us happy or we are jus finding a way to escape the confrontation of a situation by accepting something contrary to it in the name of happiness…we sometyms tend to do it unknowingly…hw do we realise wer our true happiness lies without tryino escape from anything we do not wanna face…pls reply :)
This is my most favourite post out of all the others. Your blog is wonderful Mr. Paulo!
Happiness is a feeling that comes and stays for a moment, and in that moment you are in a state of “I want nothing else more”. For example, you get a desire to eat chocolate ice cream now. You go get it from your freezer. While you are eating there is a split second of moment in which your mind is in the state of “completeness” and “wanting nothing else”. But that only stays for a split second, after that it goes away. Then you go on to fulfilling your next desire. The desires keep on continuing and extending on to career, family, children, etc,.
However, all these are impermanent happiness. There is a value for happiness in our lives because we think it makes our life complete. Or else we are plagued with the feeling of insecurity. So the problem is notional. I think I am unhappy unless I do this or do that. However, in deep sleep I am completely at peace with MYSELF. Think about it. In deep sleep, there is no happiness, no sorrow, no problems, nothing is there, except MYSELF. I am in peace with MYSELF. When we wake up in the morning we can say for sure that we had a “good” sleep. Meaning we felt good about being in peace with ourselves.
This means that one CAN be happy with just one self. Mr. Paulo, you should explore more about this in Indian Philosophy. It addresses the questions of happiness and what more is there in life other than achieving this transitory happiness. Whatever I just said in the above paragraphs is a small glimpse into Indian philosophy called Vedanta.
~Priya~
in this moment of my life, i think, that happiness should be the last sensation leaving this world. Its long and difficult process to arrive to it, but i think its the meaning of life: to be happy dying.
Be happy to know to leave some sign: new creatures which will not be only #working robots#,
Be happy to be helpfull
And to be happy to win the war with #money & power# :) Its the big thing in western culture to win it.
Since I, personally, cannot recall one period in my life when I thought of myself as being completely happy (ecept, maybe, for the birth of my son, yet now I would rather describe it as a moment of ecstasy rather then happiness) I have long ago relegated the issue of happiness among those things which, like the true nature of God, will only be revealed after the passage into the other realm. And yet, I wonder. Maybe those people who keep moving and don’t stop to think, maybe they do have the secret of true happiness. Maybe the peasant who labors his field, watches the crop grow and ripe, harvests it in due time, sells some, keeps some, starts preparing the next crop the day he finished harvesting the current one, his wife who bears children, rears them and waits for them to take care of her in her old age, while she will tell stories from other times to her grandchildren, maybe they really know the secret, and maybe our intelectual habits of doubting and questioning keep us from reaching it. Maybe happiness only exists in total simplicity, and by wanting and trying to grasp it, to understand and explain it, we just lose it. I wonder.
What is happiness? It is a very good question!! And like Paulo, I don’t think that I know how to answer it. However, I do not consider myself happy.
As people may say, I should be as I have everything that a person can dream of (a nice flat, a good work, I am in good health, true friends, my family is fine despite the normal material problems of life). We can say that I should not complain as I am in a far better situation than a lot of people in this world.
However, I am missing one thing that is most important than the rest for me: I am missing LOVE. I am talking about true love. I am missing to be loved in return by the person I love.
At this stage, the rest does not matter. I can take one day after another and try to enjoyed it at the maximum (Carpe Diem) but deeply, it appears all fake.
I don’t think this is the right answer (if there is any right answer) to the question “What is happiness?” I don’t know if the day I find true love I will be happy but for the moment, despite all the luck I have in life, it is what I am missing.
The most important things in life aren’t things” as said by Anthony J. D’Angelo…” Life is to be lived….. do not squander time!
True happiness comes from inner peace. Inner peace comes along with the knowledge of how this world goes, how important and essential harmony is, while also knowing that every single creature has its very own mission to complete. People have such a strong fear deep inside their hearts because they lack of knowledge. People always feared what they didn’t know. The Courage to research the inner darkness is the first step to inner peace. How could someone possibly be happy at all while not knownig what life is, who he is, what the meaning of his life is?
You don’t have to know the answers to above mentioned questions, but you have to go this path of harmony to find out, that is what makes true happiness. To know your life is a sacrifice (holy work) for the higher goal and you are a very important part of it. In fact, your part in the work of god was entrusted especially to you, not without reason…
Best Regards
–Alex–
I think happiness is a state of mind. It’s the absence of feeling sad, angry, jealous or another negative emotion. Happiness is feeling upbeat/joyful/content/excited/ ecstatic/at peace/content or another very pleasant emotion.
da quando ero piccola ,ho dato un volto diverso alla felicita’.Ho scoperto che lei veste quasi sempre un sogno non realizzato…ora penso che avendo la salute ,ogni giorno puo’nascondere in se’ felicita’.Un incontro inaspettato.,il rivedere degli amici,il vedere gli altri felici,tutto cio’che racchiude il mistero della creazione.mi piacerebbe non dover dipendere dal denaro,condividere piu’ momenti con menti pensanti,parlare senza dover guardare l’orologio.dare valore al tempo ,perche’ solo cosi si apprezza tutto cio’che e’ racchiuso nel tempo,amore compreso.
This is such a simple word and complex at the same time! My daugther is the one who asked me that question few years ago and it came together with the I don’t see you smile almost never what makes you happy??? I told her to give me some time to answer and after I reflex few days on it. I was very humble and honest about it. from them on I have been smiling more and making them part of what makes me happy. A sunraise, sunset, walking, observing nature, being with them and by myself… A simple moment with God.
I do not know what happiness exactly is…. but I feel happy when I can do something which makes someone else feel happy.
Happiness: when I sit silently in my room, it is very early morning, everybody of my family is still sleaping. I sit and slowly drink fresh green tea with honey. And I think:HOW HAPPY I AM! HOW BEAUTIFUL MY LIFE IS….
we are sharing the same moments:)I too feel the hopefull beauty of my happiness…
i do that 2 at any time.. i drink my Tchae in a pyramid shape without the honey ,,,however it does taste like honey. I am so lucky in the silence with my soul,searching this bring a big smile on my face. I am on a good deal with my smiles points, travelling wise.
Happiness is truth, honesty trust and humbleness!
personally “happiness” is not a spoken words but simply inner peace with an awe.
hello everyone!! I don’t know exactly how to feel REALLY happy. I guess i have felt happy, but for such brief moments only.. I have this longing inside me to “embrace” the world. To “touch” as many person as possible, and every culture in every country.. But I have no Idea on how to realize this longing.. It’s as if i am not complete and I need to “merge” or be “part”
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