21 Thoughts About Happiness

By

Bill Cottringer

“A smile is happiness you'll find right under your nose.” ~Tom Wilson.

     After studying the phenomenon of “happiness” for over 73-years now, I have arrived at twenty-one important, useful realities about this thing we call happiness:

1.       1. Happiness is probably the most sought after, yet most misunderstood state of being we can ever experience or try to understand; all the dictionary does is provide a handful of synonyms that need defining themselves and therefore it is the personal, connotative meanings that affect us most in our lives.

2.      2.  The animated feeling of happiness seems to be mostly momentary and we seem to know what it actually is, best by comparing it to what it isn’t—during the moments of sadness or unhappiness.

3.       3. We can cry during both moments of extreme joy or extreme sadness and understanding this dualism unlocks a great mystery of life—that things appearing to be opposite are really just different sides to the same coin.

4.       4. Some philosophers and psychologists make the distinction between the ideal genuine/authentic happiness and the real, regular happiness; but this judgment just ruins the experience by abstract words far removed from the real thing. It is like trying to drink air instead of water.4

5.       5. Happiness is more an accumulation of varied sensations, such as piece of mind, sense of meaning, contentment, joy, achievement, delight, bliss, and pleasure—that we constantly experience as a consequence of the things we do to bring these sensations about, rather than something we can actively seek, capture, control and continue separately. Maybe time is life’s way of keeping all the happy times from happening all at once.

6.       6. Two important verbs greatly affect how much happiness we have or don’t have: Seeking pushes happiness away, while accepting attracts it.

7.       7. Happiness doesn’t seem to be related to the optimism or pessimism that helps bring about achievement and results in what we are trying to do, as great discoveries and inventions have come equally from the eternally optimistic folks as well as the realistic cynics. Never-the-less, leaning towards optimism and hope seems to work out better in the long run.

8.       8. The single, two-way human behavior that seems to be mostly linked with happiness is unconditional loving and being loved the same way; nothing else seems to be needed. Of course a puppy’s breath, licking and tail wagging sure add a lot! (That is why Will Rogers probably said, “If dogs don’t go to heaven, then that is where I want to go.”)

9.       9. Happiness can be better experienced and appreciated rather than analyzed and understood; besides it is gone by then.

10.  10.  Once you assign certain words to capture the essence of happiness, you limit what it is and can be, as well as what it can do with the power it has.

11.  11.  Much like success, how you define something like happiness, determines how much or how little of it you have—the broader you define it, the more abundance of it everyone has, while the narrower you define it, it becomes more of a scarcity for all.

12.   12. Happiness can be measured externally or internally, but an internal sense of making some progress at something worthwhile we are trying to do, seems to be more intense and last much longer.

13.   13. Early philosophers struggled diligently to define and understand the truth about happiness, but in the end it was probably their enthusiastic search itself that was their main source of happiness; hence the saying “life is a journey rather than a destination.”

14.   14. Spontaneous creative efforts may be the second best source of happiness, other than loving behavior.

15.   15. Flowers are nature’s visual expression of life’s happiness.

16.  16.  After love and creativity, there are three nouns that are an integral part of attracting any quality we can call happiness—appreciation, grace and humility and the more the better.

17.   17. A great deal of happiness can come from taking the time to notice the simple beauty in ordinary things all around us; after all, the more complicated, complex things are way too distracting and time consuming.

18.   18. Judging outer happiness by smiles and laughter alone probably misses half of it, especially the inside stuff.

19.   19.As children we never had to try very hard to be happy, we just were. Why is that? Did language and words come along to distance us from the presence of happiness, which is always there for experiencing it without thought or judgment. Oddly though, words are the only way back to our birthright, that life always seems to have a way back to.  

20.  20. One thing is sure about relationships—other people can’t make you happy, only unhappy and those are the ones to avoid. At the end of any day, you are what you read and who you hang out with, so make those things count most in accumulating happy memories to outweigh the unhappy ones.  

21.   21. At this point in my own journey, I have an undeniably, profound sense that there is surely more to come and I certainly don’t anticipate being disappointed.

“The best way to pay for a lovely moment is to enjoy it.” ~Richard Bach.