01 Happiness

An introduction to the concept of happiness.

Happiness in the 21st Century, for many, is a personal quest.  What do you want from life?  A simple answer is - I want to be happy but I think this is the wrong way of looking at happiness.  So much of the wellness/happiness industry is just consumerism, it may give you some pleasure but will not make you happy.

Happiness is an understandable universal human desire but how well do we appreciate the dialectical nature of the emotional state of happiness?

So much of the human condition, including our emotions, can be understood as a duality.  The poles of love and hate, for example, do not exist in isolation, they are part of a whole, a oneness, a spectrum or continuum of emotions.  It is the space between these poles that define and give meaning.  This is the same for happiness.

To help understand this I use an overarching concept called the 'Happiness Spectrum'.   It is loosely based upon the concept of the Mental Health Continuum.   At any one time we are all somewhere on this spectrum!   It's even possible to be both happy and unhappy at the same time!  Happiness is not constant, it's dynamic and always changing. The actions we take have consequences that influence where we are on this spectrum.  We can Plan, Act, Reflect and Modify our actions to bring about positive personal change.   A dialectical process that helps us manage our life and therefore our happiness.  

Internal and External Factors.

There are always going to be times when we are unhappy because of health, grief or other life events that we react to and affect us.  These are internal and external factors that impact on our life.  They include our basic human rights and needs.   

For example, is it possible to be happy if you live in poverty without enough food?  Are there certain biological, cultural, social or structural conditions necessary before we can be happy?  Can you be consciously happy if you have a severe health condition, or are born into a society that has a caste system?   Is happiness the same as pleasure? It's important to recognise that there are external constraints to overcome.

We can consciously manage a life worth living through concepts, knowledge, values, skills, processes and actions that move us along the happiness spectrum.  In my experience this only works when it is done in a way that values other people, other life, and their place in the world.  It is strength based. 

Expectations.

A life worth living, one with purpose, is dynamic and ever changing.  Within this what makes us happy today, may not make us happy tomorrow.  Our expectations are constantly changing.  There is a relationship between aspirations, expectations, achievement and happiness.  Much happiness comes when we achieve our expectations or meet our aspirations, that is to say when we lead a life worth living.

Happiness is a universal desire but not a universal condition.  It is unique to an individual in time and place.  My expectations as a 20 year old student were different from now, having worked for 30+ years with people in community organisations.  If we want to be happy then we have to manage changes in our circumstances and our expectations, in our purpose.  It's oft quoted, but change is the only constant.

Each of us has individual expectations at any given time in our life.  I have simplified 'individual expectations' to 'purpose with passion'.  If we have purpose, and we have passion for that purpose, then we lead a life worth living and can be consciously happy.  Passion can be defined as a desire to do something one likes or thinks is important.  Sometimes addressing a lack of a basic right gives purpose, and this process in itself can be a happy one.  Intuitively contradictory as this may seem.

Don't Agonise.

There are structural, cultural or personal constraints that impede our taking action but I advocate a 'can do' approach to bring about personal change.  P.A.R.M. Plan, Act, Reflect, & Modify.  Hence

            "Don't agonise, organise"   

If you do nothing, it's likely nothing will change.  Don't procrastinate, don't agonise - have confidence.  P.A.R.M - Plan, Act, Reflect and Modify and learn along the way. 

Act.

People are doers, and when we do something that has purpose and passion, when we meet our expectations, we are happy!  I have found this especially so when we are compassionate.  I have found this especially so when we collaborate with others.  We've evolved as social beings.  Interestingly there is also a relationship between purpose and life expectancy.  If you have purpose you tend to live longer!  Also interestingly, when you do or move you stay healthier.

I think it is also important to respect other life, and our interdependence with it.  Homo sapiens evolved about 250,000 years ago.  It is only in the last few hundred years that we have lost our intimacy with other life and developed a somewhat malignant disregard for our planet that is our home.  The implication of this is that your purpose has to include a passion for the environment that we all live in.

Reflect.

Sometimes forgotten is the need to reflect, to take stock, or to simply sit quietly.  Reflection can be a formal process, a measurement against specific expectations or objectives.  At other times it can be meditative, using a mindfulness exercise.  A friend once said to me that every day she takes a twenty minute holiday doing nothing.  I like her advice.

Only you know or can find your purpose.  Only you know what you're passionate about.  These blog pages suggest ways of finding purpose and passion, and then turning them into practical, manageable actions that enable your expectations to be met, to help lead a life worth living and through this be happy some of the time.

Definitions: 

There are so many definitions of happiness.  Here are two I like:  

"...happiness is a state of well-being that encompasses living a good life, one with a sense of meaning and deep contentment."  Psychology Today.

'...overall appreciation of one's life as-a-whole"  Ruut Veenhoven 

Research.

If you would like further research happiness.  Maybe start with the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who saw the desire for happiness as the sole purpose of life, an end in itself, and that all other things are desires as a means of producing this.  There are no gods, and no life after death.  We should look to empirical evidence and logic.  It's a good starting point.    

Happiness as a duality.  Happiness is meaningless without its opposite, unhappiness (sometimes called suffering.) they are two aspects of the same thing.  For Buddhists, humans have a right to be happy but only in the context of not creating suffering for others.  

There's an interesting section on happiness in Homo Deus - A Brief History of Tomorrow byYuval Noah Harari.

Ruut Veenhoven is a Dutch sociologist and a pioneer and world authority on the scientific study of happiness in the sense of subjective enjoyment of life. His work on the social conditions for human happiness in the Netherlands has contributed to a renewed interest in happiness as an aim for public policy. He has shown that happiness can be used a reliable measure to assess progress in societies which was one of the sources of inspiration for the United Nations to adopt happiness measures as an holistic approach to development.

Mystical insight and scientific empiricism are both part of this holistic approach.

I welcome feedback.  Please contact me.