Happiness is something everyone wants to have in his or her life. One may be highly successful and have lot of money, but without happiness everything is meaningless.
Why everyone strives for happiness and what is happiness? These two questions trouble every person living on the earth, because everyone has different views on happiness and most importantly, happiness can’t be measured.
Generally, ordinary people consider small sensual pleasures as happiness and according to them, the search for happiness means search for pleasures of the senses. The question 'what is happiness' does not arise in their hearts, because they treat life, full of sensory joys as a happy life.
Hence generally we link happiness and welfare with a life of attachments, hard work, healthy food and study. If this would have been true, the people in developed countries would have been the happiest people in the world. But we, however, find that all these people are unhappy, worried about future, and are in search of what happiness really is. Hence, it’s true that we can’t achieve happiness without knowing what real happiness is.
Some researchers say that, happiness is not in the objects of enjoyment, but in the imagination. They explain it as when people look towards others having fewer possessions than themselves, they feel happy. But when they look towards people having more wealth and possessions, they feel unhappy.
Hence, this ideology doesn’t hold much ground. It is, therefore, clear that in fact, sensual pleasures are imaginary and real happiness is quite different from these, and the original question, 'What is happiness' stands.
Some vies believe that happiness is the satisfaction of desires and unhappiness as denial of those. But it’s not possible to satisfy one’s desires completely because there are unlimited desires of countless people and the things are limited. Also new desires generate as soon as the old ones are fulfilled. So, it’s apparent that the ever changing desires can never be satisfied and people doing after satisfying the desires can never be happy. Hence, the conceptions like satisfaction of desires and getting subsequent happiness are just the mirage in the ocean of the great desert of the life.
Recent research on happiness says that happiness is not in the satisfaction of desires because happiness lies in the absence of the desires, not in the satisfaction. Whenever we enjoy with the help of senses, it’s sensual pleasure only.
The real non sensory happiness, just as the soul, can’t be achieved with the help of senses. It is attribute of the soul, can’t be found in human bodies. Hence, wondering with the wrong faith, non belief in values and higher purpose, and finding the happiness in the non-self objects is the root cause of unhappiness.
As per the official definition in Merriam-Webster dictionary, the happiness is a state of well being, which is related to soul of the being. Happiness is the respect towards human values and living towards higher purpose. Hence, to get real happiness, we have to see within ourselves, because our soul is the depository of eternal bliss and everlasting joy. People in the pursuit of happiness should turn their efforts towards inner beings, not outside.
“Happiness is not something you experience, it’s something you have inside yourself” - Oscar Levant
Hence, happiness is not to find somewhere else, but within self. Happiness is to be enjoyed not to be possessed. The psychological research shows that absence of restlessness is happiness and there should not be any desire for happiness, because desire themselves make us unhappy.
“Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing”- George Sheehan
When we search happiness within ourselves, our soul, it all relates to our purpose of life.
“Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” –Aristotle.“Happiness is that consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values” - Ayn Rand
When we know the purpose of our life, it takes aside the small desires and wishes and allows us to look into our soul, and experience the real happiness.
Mahatma Gandhi say, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”, which means when our body, soul and our mind are coordinating to achieve the goal, higher than small temporary desires, we achieve happiness.
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