What is "Happy?"

C

CosmicWeinerDog

Guest
Original poster
Lets start things with my favorite quote:

"The fact that you are even here, alive, on this planet is a mathematical miracle, and you should not spend the time that you have being busy being miserable."
-Philip DeFranco​

So I had a discussion in the Cbox today and the question was brought to light. We all know that we want to be happy, hell we do all sorts of things to be so. We buy fancy cars, read self help books, volunteer for stuff, teach, learn, play, work and participate in an endless number of events to persue it as an overall goal. That's all fine and dandy but as this conversation played out, I didn't really know a cut and dry definition of the word.

So I looked it up, and I found this. Autumn said I should post it here, so here it is.

"Happiness is an emotion. So is sadness, love, hate, curiosity, revulsion, excitement, jealousy, contentment, depression, anxiety, fear, guilt and anger. All emotions have causes, causes which can be understood and controlled.
The emotion of happiness is not caused simply by entertaining your whims. (Whims are an obstacle to happiness.) Happiness is not merely a life lived by accumulating moments of pleasure. On the contrary, happiness is a long lasting enduring enjoyment of life, it is being in love with living... Once you learn to have confidence in your own mind and once you discover the virtues that make it possible for you to achieve your values and that make your life worth living, then you will experience the result - an earned pride and a genuine self-esteem. And of course happiness."

The article was very well written and if you'd like to read more of it here you go: http://www.drkenner.com/what_is_happiness.htm

Dunno if that helps anyone, but I thought I'd share.
 
I agree with the definition of happiness being a long lasting enduring enjoyment of life and I recently realized this in my own life. Yes there are times when I'm down, when I feel like breaking things or screaming at the top of my lungs - but I still love life. I never used to though and it took a lot of soul searching for me to get to this point. (And that's not to say that something else in life could topple my self confidence and belief.)I believe that achieving that sense of happiness is different from person to person which makes it absolutely fascinating.

Thanks for sharing Cosmic. ^^
 
This explains why I'm never happy.
 
What is happiness? Well, I'll give you both the scientific answer, and my own opinion. First, we'll get the funnest one done, the scientific definition and explanation of which happiness is. I don't know how many people are actually going to read this rather long description of what it is. Here it goes, hope you enjoy.

Emotions are caused by Neutrons in the brain, they send chemicals that help the neutrons communicate with each other to give the individual an emotion. All emotions are created by chemicals within our brains. Happiness is a complex emotion we feel, bringing us unknowingly through a very complicated yet fascinating process. Whatever our body is doing chemicals are telling our bodies to do it, it's called 'chemical communicators', which hold the nervous system and language.

In other words, happiness is triggered by chemicals in the brain when we see something we like, smell, feel, you name it (as much as depression and anger holds but those are two very different subjects. I should move on or I'll ramble.)

Onto my personal opinion.

Mainly it stems from the scientific explanation I put up above my opinion as seen here, but what makes me happy is life itself. Learning, knowledge, my favourite shows, my family, my kids, many things. I am a positive person, even when bad things happen I can still find a reason to smile each and everyday. And I want my friends and family to smile and be happy too, seeing happy people makes me happy. Also, I believe that happiness also comes from the soul. The fact that I've been through much in my life and can move on makes me happy. If you spend your whole life stewing on the bad things, on your past, you can never move forward. Now I am not going to go into my personal history, but I know one thing is I have so much to be thankful for.

Happiness is a newborn's cry when he or she is born.

Happiness is seeing that loved one you haven't in such a long time.

Happiness is that feeling you get when you are near the one you share your soul and heart with.

Happiness is those children who see their mother or father return home from war alive.

Happiness is that realization you get when you wake up that you've done something good for someone else.

Happiness is what you make of it. My happiness is my loved ones, and the fact that I can smile through the dark, that I can see the path in front of me, and when i can't I know that there are people there to guide me.
 
Now I'm definitely not happy. I had to read a wall of text.

Oh, and Phoenix? I think you meant "neurons" not "neutrons".
 
Yes, I apologize for that. I was half dead when I typed that.
 
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