Happiness

Blueblades

No aspect of life is more desired, more elusive, and more perplexing than happiness. People wish and strive for what they believe will make them happy i.e, good health, attractive looks, an ideal marriage, children, a comfortable home, success, fame, financial independence, the list goes on and on. ( Add your own ).

Not everyone who attains these goals, however, finds happiness. Unhappiness appears to be at least as prevalent as happiness. An astounding number of Americans suffer from clinical depression, a sustained form of unhappiness. A significant number decide to end their unhappiness by committing suicide. ( In the United States, more than a quarter of a million people attempt to end their lives every twelve months, and about 30,000 succeed.

What causes you to be happy or unhappy, do you mind sharing this topic with us here on this forum.

I'll start. Right now I am in the middle of mood swings. I'm happy sometimes, then I find myself mulling over things in my life that make me unhappy. Then when I look around the world on the web and here, I think to myself, why am I unhappy? Their is so much suffering going on in other peoples lives.

So, really then, what is happiness? How does one define it?

Thanks, Blueblades

OpenFireGlass

My bitches can ALWAYS cheer me up...

jstalin

I've gotten this question from my JW friend... "are you happy?" Yes, I am happy. Life has its ups and downs, for sure, but I just look around me and see a world with so much diversity and so many unique people. I enjoy getting up every day and facing the world - what new challenge or new bit of information will I encounter today? I've got good friends and a good family. It frankly doesn't take much to make me happy. I keep my stomach full (sometimes too full), and I have a roof over my head. I enjoy motorcycle rides just for fun. And I love a good book. Life is good!

But, ultimately:

alt

Spectrum

Happiness could be being content with what you have got. I have mood swings.

Siddhashunyata

There is a way of seeing that is full and satisfying. It is quite simple but the mere suggestion of it brings opposition from those who value their present unsatisfying state of mind. It seems ridiculous that it would be like this but it is. At some point one has to accept that they need to find the mind they had as a child. Not the immature thinking mind of the child but the satisfying, fulfilled perception experienced by that child's mind. As a child we did not recognize that our perception of reality felt different than the adults around us. Likewise the adults ( whom we have become) felt the child's mind was just immature and full of imagination, a "child's" mind. But it is more than that. The child has a sense that he is walking in his own unconscious, like a "vivid" dream. Everything is part of him and it is all about discovering the contents of his everyday mind . Each object was perceived nonjudgementally and its intrinsic essence was felt as part of himself without anxiety. Life was that and that is what has been lost because the objects became the reality replacing the truth that the perceiving mind and its contents are the reality . You don't just get back to that everyday mind by snapping your finger although that has happened. There are different approaches but the fundamental truth is that you are walking in your own everyday mind but blocking it's natural operation . The empty, anxious feeling is the feeling of separation from what you perceive. As children you did not have this until it crept in and made you the adult you are today. In the same manner , acting collectively, the many anxious adult minds have made the world what is now. But as individuals we can find our way back and then take a fresh look at the things going on.

serendipity

I tend to think in terms of contentment. For me contentment is being satisfied and grateful for what I have (i.e. wanting what I have). I regularly do gratitude exercises, to list the 5 things I'm grateful for. It helps me over the rough spots.
What makes me unhappy:

I'm entering a transition period - and am anticipating and dreading the empty nest. Part of me is anxious to get on with it, to pursue the interests I put on the back burner while my daughter was growing up. However, when I think about my daughter leaving, that makes me unhappy. Though I try not to dwell on it, those thoughts rudely encroach on my consciousness.

Sure, I wish I was thinner and wish I had a man in my life, but overall I"m content.