Happiness. Where Art Thou?

So if you've read this blog a bit you know that by acting on my ideas, I now feel a sense of accomplishment.  A sense of having honored my ideas and myself. My ideas now have credibility with me and have the chance to be included in public discourse and, inevitably, be available for critical analysis.  

Meaning that people may not like them very much.

All that is pretty good.  And what I was planning for when I set out on this journey with Quixoting.

So why do I not feel a powerful sense of happiness about my efforts to date?  Because I still have a long way to go? Is it that I will never be happy with what I've done? Kind of a perfectionist?

What does happiness mean anyway?  Is it the same as joy?  Is one temporary and one long-term?

Well, to give this a little bit of sense, I've been keeping track of popular references to happiness and now thought I'd summarize it here.  

Am I covering the scope of the world's philosophy?  Of course not.  But I will, I hope, begin to crack the code.  For myself.  And perhaps you'd like to chime in . . .

So how does dictionary.com define happiness?  

hap⋅pi⋅ness

–noun

1.	the quality or state of being happy.

2.	good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

Origin: 
1520–30; happy + -ness 

Synonyms:
1, 2. pleasure, joy, exhilaration, bliss, contentedness, delight, enjoyment, satisfaction. Happiness, bliss, contentment, felicity imply an active or passive state of pleasure or pleasurable satisfaction.Happiness results from the possession or attainment of what one considers good: the happiness of visiting one's family. Bliss is unalloyed happiness or supreme delight: the bliss of perfect companionship. Contentment is a peaceful kind of happiness in which one rests without desires, even though every wish may not have been gratified: contentment in one's surroundings. Felicity is a formal word for happiness of an especially fortunate or intense kind: to wish a young couple felicity in life. 

Antonyms:
1. misery.

There are many other ways to define happiness:

Happiness = The Anticipation Of Pleasure.  

This one worked for me for a while.  Basically, fill your life with interesting things and you feel good knowing that fun things are on the way.  But what if you only enjoy the anticipation and the actual happiness of the event is fleeting?  I wrote something quick on this a few weeks back . . .

Happiness = the anticipation of pleasure

I get pleasure from productive creative time

Productive creative time delivers a tangible idea

That tangible idea is made up of my mental DNA

Mental DNA includes me plus all that I experience

Experience gives thoughts relevance

Being relevant makes me happy

Happiness = The Absence Of Pain

The tough thing here is that pain is multi-dimensional and includes sadness, physical pain, stress, discomfort and the like.  How can we ever be absent of all that at one time?  I have had moments of complete mental freedom and those do feel good.  I remember one particular time in Yakima, Washington.  It was winter, cold and snowing.  I was sitting my garage with the big door open, watching big snowflakes fall on the driveway.  Me in a beach chair drinking a cold beer.  And I had one - a moment of nothingness.  Bliss.  

Happiness - Absence Of Knowledge Or a State Of Ignorance

Think of newborns (except when hungry/soiled, of course).  Think of Thumper in Bambi.  Sid from Ice Age or Donkey from Shrek.  Is that a fair characterization of their reason to be happy?  How does one become ignorant and does it really work?  Are shut-ins happy?  Hermits?

Happiness = A Life Full Of Distraction

I guess you could argue this is similar to or related to "anticipation", but this one came from a recent interview on NPR.  They were interviewing Woody Allen and asked him about happiness.  His view was that there will always be pain and discomfort.  Life will always be hard in some way.  But through filling your life with events and people who keep you busy, you pay less attention to the tough stuff.

Why this focus and why today?  In the middle of feeling the freedom from acting on my ideas, why focus on this?

Well, I find it interesting.  Always have.  While I did not major in philosophy, I always loved the idea that someday I would.  And I think that we as thinking creatures should always ponder life in this way.

I'm not the ignorant type.  Although I'm attracted to their characters in movies.

And, don't get me wrong.  I love what I am doing here at Quixoting and with Tim's Strategy.  But taking action on your ideas does not drop you into a nirvana swimming pool.  There will be frustrations and obstacles.

And having thought of them I feel better prepared to battle them.

In conclusion, I'll share a great poem by Carl Sandburg.  I wrote out this poem and had it on my wall . . . in High School.

HAPPINESS

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.

And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.

They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them

And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river

And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

Comments

[Laura Drury]

What about simply deciding to be happy? Yes, I realize that we have things that happen in our lives that invoke other feelings in us, but what if we felt all of these feelings in an overall context of happiness?

What I think this means is that we focus on feeling joyful, content and happy; rather than on anything else. I think it is a mental practice and a way of fully engaging life.

Great to think about!
Thanks!

[Tim Tyrell-Smith]

Hey Laura - Yes, I think visioning is a good idea. Interesting question you pose. Is happiness a decision? I like your focus - supports where I am heading . . .

[Arash Sayadi]

Tim, I wonder if happiness has anything to do with living in the now. Look at a dog. A dog has memory of the past, but doesn't hold on to it. As soon as you show it an act of kindness, it's happy again.

Dogs don't seem to make plans for future either, at least none that any of us humans know about.

So, may be happiness is just that old axiom of "living in the now," and getting rid of our old baggage, lingering negative thoughts gnawing at our soul, and worrying less about the future and how it'll unfold. May be we should just enjoy the people we're with right now...Enjoy the house we live in now...enjoy that precious ten minutes in the mornings we have with our children before they run off to school, instead of worrying whether you'll have a full day to spend with them.

May be that's happiness, not the concern of whether we'll reach the destination, but the journey and the people we meet along the way.

[Tim Tyrell-Smith]

Arash -

Of course living in the now is where I would love to spend my time. I've read a number of books re: Zen and love the idea of living in the now. Of living the details of a task or experience. The only problem is I struggle to do it on most days.

Writing, as of late, has become one of the few places where I relish in the now as I get to watch the creation happen on the page.

I often look at and wonder about my 13 year old lab - smiling in the sun. Sounds nice!

Thanks for adding your voice here - I was hoping to get your perspective on this one.

[thom singer]

If one is a "seeker" in their soul, they will never content in the way they think contentment is happiness. To a seeker the joy comes from the journey.

[Tim Tyrell-Smith]

Hey Thom - Sounds like me and, yes, that makes sense. Hmmmm

[madhura]

happieness is jst being it comes wen u stp searchn fr answers