About happiness: what is it that we all seek?
Happiness: what a beautiful word . Have you ever wondered where it comes from? Have you ever wondered what it means to you? Have you ever wondered why we all look for it? In these lines you may discover your own answers to start discovering how you are happy.
- Related article: "The 5 types of happiness, and how to achieve this state"
The concept of happiness
From the foundation of civilization to today, many people have reflected on this construct that we call happiness, so, as Elsa Punset rightly writes in Happy, the study of happiness "more than discovery, is a reunion "with the reflections and conclusions of other humans before us .
Other humans who were and are thinkers, explorers of different cultures, artists, poets, neuroscientists who study the brain, philosophers who "love knowledge", sociologists who analyze society, anthropologists who compare cultures, psychologists who, in their "study of the mind ", they try to unravel the mental web that is the logos or the knowledge about human happiness.
Its etymological origin , therefore, it also depends on the civilization that is observed. On the one hand, it is related to the Greek root Eudaimonia (eudaimonia) which literally means "good fortune".
If we decompose the word into its two elements: eu, which means "good", and give us what "divinity" means, the key to happiness was the Greeks in one who has a good spirit, or who has good spirits.
The same happens in the Anglo-Saxon countries appealing to the concept of "favorable luck", as in the meaning of Happiness, which comes from Happen: to happen by chance. Or we can understand it also in German, Glück, from Gelingen, which literally means "to have good success"; let's notice that in English Luck (or Good luck) is equivalent to the German word Glück Interesting, right?
- Maybe you're interested: "Daniel Kahneman and his studies on happiness"
The mental facet of the happy person
From a cognitive point of view, happiness can be described as a series of thoughts about our emotions that produce an inner, deep and lasting well-being. The same definition of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), we might think, confirms the aforementioned:
Happiness; from lat. congratulations, -atis. F. State of pleasant spiritual and physical satisfaction. F. Person, situation, object or group of them that contribute to be happy. F. Absence of inconveniences or stumbles.
Currently, this has generated a recurring confusion between the terms eudaimonia and hedonism (hedoné-ἡδονή), since, as positive psychology promulgates, the purpose of human life is happiness, sometimes understood-erroneously-as pleasure, (Cfr Bueno, 2005; Lozano et al., 2016) in Colmenarejo Fernández, R. (2017). And I say wrongly because pleasure is not equal to happiness, but pleasure by definition must always be relegated to a part of our complete happiness. I will develop this idea in my next article.
And maybe the purpose of human life is not to live happily, but just to live. Would not it be more appropriate to understand pleasure as a means and not as an end? The difference is therefore that while hedonism is centered on immediate pleasure, which we could now call joy, eudaimonia is the constant fullness of living life, which we could currently call happiness.
Beyond the definitions
Happiness is a topic that everyone thinks about but few people study. Although we may never agree on the exact definition of happiness, this is rather one of those things that you do not know how to define, but when you see it you know what it is . And the reality is that each individual, according to the culture in which he is irremediably immersed, and his personal experiences, forms throughout his life a concept about his own happiness.
During my research on the subject, I have come to realize that the pursuit of happiness is very relevant in our current society, since it involves many people, and most human beings want to be happy.
At the time of writing these lines, I have a sample of 275 people aged between 7 and 108 years. With 66% women and 34% men, the vast majority of Spanish nationality. 50% live in urban areas and 50% live in rural areas. The current occupation is to study or work, or both.
The key question
The first question I pose to someone who wants to know how happy they are is: How are you?
In general, most people say they are "fine". Okay, people are fine, but being well does not necessarily mean being happy. And the results show that 9 out of 10 people will tell you that they are looking to be happy . The remaining person also thinks about it, but will not tell you.
But what is happiness? Fernández-Berrocal already wrote in his article that "the attempt to answer this question may seem pretentious and it is natural for the reader to think about it, because even the one who asks the question shakes his hand while writing it." I think the same thing is happening to me.
But that does not bother me, nor should I worry about you. Because what I propose (and maybe this is the key to the necessary paradigm shift) is ask ourselves how we are happy, instead of asking ourselves again and again what happiness is . In this way, just by changing what a passive to a proactive one, we will come to understand happiness as a personal decision and not as an object that can-or should-be achieved.
The message is clear: the study of happiness and all that entails is a subject of utmost importance for the human species. If we live happily, we live longer and better. In the end, what you will realize is that, although the reflection on happiness is at the hands of a few, the pursuit of happiness is universal.
Bibliographic references:
- Colmenarejo Fernández, R. (2017). The problem of happiness in Aristotle: answers from Francisco Suárez and Martha Nussbaum. Annals of the Cátedra Francisco Suárez, 51, 27-27.
- Julián Pérez Porto and María Merino. Published: 2009. Updated: 2009. Definition: Definition of happiness (//definicion.de/felicidad/).
- The five thieves of happiness. John Izzo, 2017 (Uranus).
- To answer the online questionnaire About happiness, enter the following link: //goo.gl/forms/gMHJcbvLRRiQCrew2.
