Happiness - A Matter of What Matters?

Disclaimer: This is going to be more of a personal essay rather than a discussion of happiness philosophies and related research. Although, admittedly, initially I did think I’d just do a quick reflection on my take on happiness, and when I started, I found myself navigating quicksand of a myriad of little nuggets related to the subject matter. Eventually, I had to pull the plug and decide it was enough for now. Additionally, I’m not trying to discover a universal happiness formula for everyone - I’m only interested in establishing one for myself. A guideline.

This (relatively long) post will be comprised of the following parts that I’ll be adding here weekly (or so):

Intro (Why Happiness & Why Now)

Part 1 - What is Happiness? (Definitions across Philosophy, Psychology, Neurobiology)

Part 2 - Happiness & The Alignment Disconnect (The Matter of Values)

Part 3 - Happiness & The Awareness Disconnect (The Matter of Acknowledgment)

Part 4 - Happiness Formula

Part 5 - Segway into Beliefs (Can One Back into a Belief?)

Part 6 - From Beliefs to Happiness (Can One Back into Happiness?)

Outro (Happiness Meditation)

Intro (Why Happiness & Why Now)

The concept of happiness has been occupying my mind more and more lately for a couple of reasons.

Reason One:

I’ve lived my life up until this point convinced that my happiness is tied to building a life together with a partner (you know, the whole package of love, family, kids), and as I’ve grown to appreciate the possibility of that not being in the books for me, I’ve set myself, semi-passively and not exactly willingly, on a path of potential discovery of other happiness options, since the prospect of living the next 30-40 years of my life as a miserable single woman isn’t particularly attractive. That is, I’ve started to contemplate other sources of happiness and approaches to a happy life, outside of family-focused ones, which in turn prompted me to pursue flexibility in my perspectives on happiness. This has also made me question a number of other premises in my worldview, namely, the conviction that certain internalized concepts and their interpretations aren’t subject to deliberate change. Because changing my definition of happiness first requires believing that the things we believe make us happy are themselves capable of changing.

For example, I used to truly believe that I could never fall in love with certain kinds of people because of my conviction that my preferences for a partner are pretty set and love isn’t exactly a forced choice - that is, only because someone is a wonderful person and a good match doesn’t mean I can force-choose to love them. But if I continue to hold such a fixed perspective, then I wouldn’t be able to entertain the possibility for me to rewrite my approach to happiness either, at least not to such an extent that would allow for things other than love and family to make me happy (which is my new desired belief). Before I can even entertain new sources of happiness, I have to believe that the structure of my own mind is more flexible than I previously thought. So yeah, some agility in my thinking had to be nurtured to make this new belief a possibility. That’s one long reason, I know.

Reason Two:

I’ve noticed that I’ve become easily provoked by claims of happiness, both those expressed by others about themselves (“I’m so happy!”) and those expressed about me or on my behalf (“You must be so happy!”). Especially, the latter. Because when someone makes a remark about how wonderful your life is or how happy you must be that tends to highlight how glaring the disconnect is between what it seems you should feel and what you actually feel. It makes your, okay, my life feel wrong and me, in turn, ungrateful. After all, if I don’t think about not being happy, I don’t have to directly face my “miserableness.” And since I don’t have anything to be truly miserable about, then facing the miserableness also means facing the feeling of there being something wrong with me. The feeling I’ve flirted with for the past two decades of my life. When someone looks at a photo I’ve shared and says “You look so happy!” I tend to find myself suffocating and try to change the topic. Frankly, sharing these two reasons is starting to feel like TMI, but hey, I already filter so much in my daily life - let this be the less filtered version.

So, aren’t I supposed to know whether I live a happy life? Shouldn’t happiness be similar to love - as in, I know when I have love for someone/something, so I should similarly know when I’m happy, right? Yet apparently it’s possible to lead a happy life while not being a happy person. Is that because the assigned happiness that qualifies my life is determined by an outside observer based on their own criteria of happiness rather than my own? And should happy life actually mean a happy person and vice versa? Anyways, in essence, Reason Two is just a realization that happiness feels like a foreign concept to me, and I’m nobody if not an explorer of and reflector on “foreign” concepts.

TO BE CONTINUED ON JULY 19

Part 1 - What is Happiness? (Definitions across Philosophy, Psychology, Neurobiology)

Part 2 - Happiness & The Alignment Disconnect (The Matter of Values)

Part 3 - Happiness & The Awareness Disconnect (The Matter of Acknowledgment)

Part 4 - Happiness Formula

Part 5 - Segway into Beliefs (Can One Back into a Belief?)

Part 6 - From Beliefs to Happiness (Can One Back into Happiness?)

Outro (Happiness Meditation)

P.S. The image is from my illustrated poetry book “Ode to Hope and Despair.”