On happiness, briefly

happiness

/ˈhapɪnəs/

noun 

the state of being happy.

_

The hedonic treadmill is a prominent theory in psychology that describes that every individual has a unique baseline of happiness, where regardless of the magnitude of positive or negative events that happen to the individual, they would return to that same baseline of happiness characteristic to themselves. 

However, this baseline of happiness is not always entirely reflected in an individual's demeanor and action, as some people can seem very positive but are in actually often in a depressive state mentally or when they are alone with their thoughts, and conversely. 

This is because positivity and happiness, though often used interchangeably, are not the same thing. Positivity is an attitude, not a feeling; it is something that you choose to inhabit even in the face of less than favorable circumstances. Positivity depends on and can only exist based on your response to situations; one does not feel positive - one merely adopts a positive attitude in facing the situation. 

Happiness is also not to be confused with pleasure. Pleasure is the feeling of happiness, but might not necessarily bring about happiness. Not all pursuits of pleasure will result in happiness, such as the result of alcoholism. 

I think the key to starting to understand happiness is to recognise that this same word can refer to two different cases - one can feel happy, or one can be happy, and they're not the same thing. 

Feelings are temporary - which means that you could feel happy now, sad later and angry tomorrow, but that does not necessarily make you a happy, sad or angry person in general because feelings are transient. Thus, it is important to distinguish between happiness as something that you are feeling (ie you feel happy) and something that you inhabit (ie you are happy). 

One can feel happy by pursuing activities that bring about pleasure, which is a transient feeling of happiness. These include doing things that you enjoy, such as fishing or gardening. 

But the suggestion of doing things that we enjoy will invariably bring up the consideration of what it is we truly enjoy. What makes something truly enjoyable to us, and why do different people enjoy different things? 

I think this is dependent upon what activities align with our values and what we actually really want. 

Therein lies the problem of pursuing pleasure - it might not always align with what we consider the end goal of happiness to be. One might derive pleasure from and feel happy through forsaking work at the expense of play and enjoyment in the moment, but this would not necessarily lead to sustainable happiness if sustained. 

So what makes someone happy?

I think the common misconception exists that happiness is an end goal to be achieved - that once you complete all the side quests in that video game, win the lottery or buy that dream car, that you will be happy indefinitely. However, as we discussed earlier, the theory of the hedonic treadmill (which I think we've all experienced at some point as the highs of new achievements or standards of living start to fade away with time) will mean that that level of happiness cannot be sustained because nothing has yet fundamentally changed in your life. 

Perhaps this seeming paradox can be reconciled by understanding that happiness is a process as opposed to a destination, akin to driving a car, where happiness is not the location to which you are driving, but rather the road trip and journey of travelling there in itself (similar to reading a good novel where after you finish the conclusion, you might feel a bit sad or a small sense of loss at finishing the book already, thus happiness might well be the process of reading the book and enjoying the story and character development, instead of the focus on the end result of finishing the book). 

I think a large factor in the reinforcement of this misconception is our exposure to the sheer amounts of marketing, advertising and social media promotions that pitch to us that if you get product X or do activity Y, then you will immediately be happy and this product will bring you happiness. 

So what exactly is happiness?

Perhaps happiness is in fact the process of becoming who you want to be, and is the journey of becoming your ideal self, because it is only by doing activities that help you become that person that you want to be that you can feel that you are making progress in your life. 

Happiness and the pursuit of happiness is a moving goalpost - it is the asymptote on graph that can never be reached. It is not a state to be attained, but rather a process to be underwent. This would help explain why one can be happy without always feeling happy amidst the trials and tribulations of the pursuits of ambitious goals; one can feel disappointed or sad at a setback but still know that she is happy in the knowledge that this is the journey that means most everything that she would not rather trade for most other. 

Maybe it doesn't matter as much whether we achieve those end goals successfully than the fact that we are constantly moving toward that by taking small steps and achieving small goals, celebrating small victories as we continually raise the bar of achievement that we set out in hopes of attaining. 

How, then, might we become happier? 

Having reconciled that happiness can both refer to a feeling or a state of being, and understanding that happiness is a process as opposed to an end goal, I think the next step might be to realise that we are in control of our own happiness, and it cannot be entirely reliant on external validation as much as it should depend upon personal action. I think an important factor to keep in mind would be that regardless of how much in control we actually are of our situations, it is the belief that we are in control and can influence the outcome - even if it might be an illusion, that helps us start to take control of the situations that we find ourselves in and rise above the circumstances imposed upon us. 

To hark back to one of the themes mentioned earlier, I think one of the key steps in becoming happier and to nudge upward our baseline of happiness would also be to adopt a positive attitude in the face of less-than-ideal circumstances. We might not be in control of the situations that we find ourselves in or be able to fully influence the circumstances imposed upon us, but we are in control of what happens next, and how we respond toward it. 

In this journey that is our being on this plane of existence, it is inevitable that there will be things that get us down, and it is okay to feel sad and internalize the feelings of disappointment, heartbreak or loss, but not let it consume us for too long because remember that feelings are transient, and to become happier, we need to work toward recovering from that setback and continue progressing toward achieving our ideal outcomes. 

_

"The only thing that will make you happy is being happy with who you are"

- Goldie Hawn

_