The search for happiness. What does it mean to be happy?
What does happiness feel like? How can we be happy? And what can we do to stay happy?
These are the age-old questions no one knows the answers to. If the feeling of happiness could be bottled and sold, it would be the most expensive thing on the market. Or maybe, a naive idealist like me would hope, it would be given to everyone in equal amounts, as and when they need it and free of charge. Depression would be an illness of the past. The world would be so much better. Just imagine.
So many businesses that thrive on the ‘treat yourself’ mantra and on your impulsiveness when you’re sad, would go bankrupt. After all, several studies have shown that sadness makes people spend more money. Maybe then, such a happy pill already exists but the select few have decided to hide it from the world in fear of the collapse of the capitalist system. Okay, I’m going off-topic and letting my imagination run a bit too wild. My bad.
But before we can make this happy pill, I want to understand what happiness even is. Maybe you think you know the answer already. So, what is it? What makes you feel happy? REALLY happy.
Happiness can look different for different people. It means different things to different people. I believe it feels different to different people. But feeling happy is important. SO SO important. The world could do with some more happiness and with some more happy people. People tend to be kinder when they are happier. More happiness would make everyone’s life a lot easier.
When thinking about this, 3 ideas seemed to be the main actors of the happiness show.
Growth and Freedom
Maybe I’m cheating by clumping these two together. For me, happiness is synonymous with the feeling of freedom and personal development. I feel at my worst when I feel stagnant and stuck. When I feel trapped and unable to grow or develop.
I need to feel free and feel like I have the freedom to grow as a person, to breathe. Without this, I feel suffocated. I love to learn, to improve, to constantly better myself. I have an inquisitive mind. I ask a million questions. I love to understand things, to explore possibilities. To really comprehend things and understand the why and how. I find happiness in this.
What I didn’t understand fully until recently (read, I am still working on understanding) is that growth and development look different on different people. People develop at their own pace and in a direction that’s unique to them. What I do to develop myself as a person, because I find enjoyment in that thing, is not what everyone else around me needs to do. An individual’s personal development is incomparable to others. If anything, comparison is the killer of growth and your freedom.
Love
Happiness can also be associated with the feeling of being loved. Sometimes, the only thing that matters is LOVE. That is all you need. The Beatles would approve. Feeling loved is one of the best feelings in the world. It makes you feel powerful. No challenge is too difficult, no hardship is too tough when you have the love and support of others. You can do anything you set your mind to.
But love from others can also be unpredictable. To define your happiness in this manner becomes dangerous. It can make you feel dependant. So perhaps, if you seek love to be happy, the person you need the most love from, is yourself. Loving yourself has become almost a radical notion in our capitalist society. But if you seek it from others, happiness will always remain elusive. You are the only one who can love yourself truly and wholeheartedly. So love every single version of you, and from head to toe.
Money
It is easy to look down on and belittle those who value money and materialistic goods. To feel superior to those who admit to seeing money as their source of happiness. The people who judge are either those who have never had to struggle for money in their life or those who secretly wish they had more of it but are too proud to admit it.
We live in a capitalist world that has not only conditioned us to believe that we need money and things to be happy but has also made life impossible to enjoy without money. You can be happy without money but the consequences of not having money soon become too loud to maintain that happiness. Happiness feels inconsistent.
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So, what is happiness?
The ‘actors’ mentioned above are not three separate entities. They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, it is a carefully balanced amalgamation of these three, and other factors, that makes us happy. There is no single winning formula for happiness. Our needs and wants constantly change over time as our priorities shift.
No one can tell you what happiness is. No one knows. What makes you happy changes and evolves as you do.
How can we stay happy?
Happiness is not a destination you arrive at and can stay at forever without ever leaving. Life would be boring if it became so constant. As we constantly change and evolve, what makes us happy evolves with us. All you can do is be true to yourself, at all times.
When you separate yourself from the pressures of life, the expectations of others and the pressures and demands of the capitalist society we live in, who is that? What does that you look like?
Maybe what I’m trying to say is do more of what makes you feel like yourself. Hopefully, that will make you happy. What this involves might change over time. Be the fullest version of yourself at every stage of your life. At least, that’s what I’m trying to do.
