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What is happiness and why do people desire it

Veronika Mudrak


It is a fact that we all want to be happy: we want to feel loved, we want to have fun, we want all our problems to go away. We spend our lives in pursuit of happiness, trying to find something or someone that is going to make us feel joy. But do we actually know what it means to be happy? What even is that “happiness” that we desire so dearly? Is it actually a good thing to have a source of happiness?

 

It is quite easy to answer that first question: to feel happy is not to feel sad, right? Well, not quite. Happiness isn’t just about the lack of all negative emotion. If we were to somehow eliminate the negative emotions we experience, it wouldn’t mean that we are automatically going to feel happy. As a matter of fact, happiness can coexist with other emotions: we can feel happy and afraid while riding a rollercoaster, we can feel sad and happy when meeting an old friend after not seeing them for ages. Therefore, happiness isn’t about the lack of negative emotions.

 

To answer that second question, we could use a few different approaches. From a strictly scientific point of view, happiness could be defined as a cognitive process: a release of endorphins or dopamines, which is triggered by doing certain activities (like meeting a friend or petting a dog). From a philosophical point of view, according to Aristotle, happiness is “a complete and sufficient good”. But, from a personal point of view, happiness is extremely hard to define since it is different for everyone. What can bring joy to one person, may not do the same to the other person. Different people desire different things: some want to be wealthy, some want to be loved, and some want to be the best at everything.

 

Of course, the desire to have a better life is a good thing, but it can be extremely damaging to a person if they don’t know the right way to reach this apparent happiness. Instead of bettering their lives, some may desire to worsen the lives of those around them to make themselves feel better in comparison. People can do all kinds of horrible things to gain joy, so is the want for happiness really a good thing? Is something that can consume a person and bring out the worst aspects of their nature a positive thing? Well,  that really depends on what kind of person one is in their pursuit of joy. In my opinion, to truly be happy, a person should not seek out happiness on purpose. Often, in pursuit of something greater, we forget to look around and see the beauty of the world around us.

 

We don’t know for sure what happiness is and we will probably never give it a concrete definition. In my opinion, we shouldn’t focus on defining and labeling every single thing around us. It is okay to not be able to describe something. The only thing that is important in life is to find joy in the mundanity of our lives, in the little things around us.



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