h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I read many years ago in an article that "I want to be happy" isn't valid as an ambition.

I thought about this for many years and disagreed but now I understand it: if you seek to be a "happy person" you are striving to achieve a label. However, if you become the "happy person" and then have a bad day are you no longer a happy person and lose your label? So, perhaps, the correct way to reword the ambition above is to say "I seek to have more spells of varying degrees of happiness in my life".

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is worth looking into. It's no panacea, but for a grumpy soul like me it does make this life business a lot more bearable!

Yeah, GRJ, I agree (don't know about therapy though).

Me, I'm actively happy on very few occasions (eg, put a book & a Malt by the chair & sit down with a sigh). The rest of my happiness is the absence of unhappiness - and the rarely noticed appreciation of what I have.

Anyway, without the bad times, how would we recognise the good?

I'm a few months late to the conversation, but I agree that 'I want to be happy' sounds more like an idle wish than an undertaking.

As always definitions sort of get in the way, don't they?

Five of many easily found definitions are:
1) Characterized by good luck; fortunate.
2) Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy.
3) Being especially well-adapted; felicitous: a happy turn of phrase.
Cheerful; willing: happy to help.
4) Characterized by a spontaneous or obsessive inclination to use something. Often used in combination: trigger-happy.
5) Enthusiastic about or involved with to a disproportionate degree. Often used in combination: money-happy; clothes-happy.

I can't agree with #1, because I've known many a bloke having better luck and fortune than I, and yet don't seem a whit happier.
#3 is more about actions than feelings, so doesn't really apply to 'Are You Happy?'
#4 and #5 are more coloquial uses of the word than definitions.

That leaves us with #2 which is also only partially fitting. Enjoying pleasure, satisfaction, or joy is more apt than is 'showing, or marked by'; but it still doesn't actually describe happiness, it merely substitutes the words pleasure, satisfaction, or joy, each of which would have synonyms that include happiness!

One cannot truly refer to a simple lack of unhappiness as the state of happiness. Rocks, rivers, and dead people lack unhappiness, but that hardly constitutes happiness in the minds of most.

Lack of happiness may more approximate contentment than happiness. Many people with no reason to be content, still manage to be happy.

In my mind, happiness may best be described as mild to extreme euphoria, regardless of whether the actual circumstances would suggest it. I supppose that it could also be quantified by levels of seratonin or adrenalin.

In all, I consider myself a happy person; yet I have bouts of all sorts of emotions. I just like to think that my baseline is happy, and other emotions temporary.

Wishing you all a Happy Holiday Season!