We all want to be happy. But what is happiness? Is it the same for everyone? How do we know if we're happy? And can anyone be happy all of the time? How can we find happiness? These questions come to mind when we speak of life happiness. Our perception of life happiness is as individual as the way we perceive hot or cold. It's sort of the same for all of us, yet it's different too. No two people are exactly alike, so neither can our description of what makes a life happy be the same.
Happiness is:
1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate
2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy
Webster's Dictionary says happiness is: A state of well-being and contentment
Happiness is:
1. Characterized by good luck; fortunate
2. Enjoying, showing, or marked by pleasure, satisfaction, or joy
Webster's Dictionary says happiness is: A state of well-being and contentment
So, if we use these definitions, in order for us to say we are happy we would be fortunate, showing pleasure and feeling content. That makes sense. Most of the people that we think are happy usually show these characteristics, so lets use this definition and go from there.
Can I have life happiness if I don't think I'm fortunate? Hmmm, that's an interesting question isn't it? Most people are happy when they feel fortunate or blessed by good luck, and most people who feel unfortunate or feel like they have lots of bad luck are unhappy. BUT, perception is everything. A person can break their leg in a skiing accident (bad luck) and still be happy and smiling because they feel blessed and fortunate (probably because they didn't break both legs!). They could be happy because they know they will heal, and because they had such a great time right up until they ran into that tree! Get the picture?
Or a person could have what most of us would call good fortune and still seem not to have life happiness. There is an art to happiness, and some of us know it and some of us don't, but we all can learn.
Can I have life happiness if I don't think I'm fortunate? Hmmm, that's an interesting question isn't it? Most people are happy when they feel fortunate or blessed by good luck, and most people who feel unfortunate or feel like they have lots of bad luck are unhappy. BUT, perception is everything. A person can break their leg in a skiing accident (bad luck) and still be happy and smiling because they feel blessed and fortunate (probably because they didn't break both legs!). They could be happy because they know they will heal, and because they had such a great time right up until they ran into that tree! Get the picture?
Or a person could have what most of us would call good fortune and still seem not to have life happiness. There is an art to happiness, and some of us know it and some of us don't, but we all can learn.
Is life happiness the same for everyone? Probably not, even though the normal signs of happiness listed above in the dictionary definitions probably show up in every person who is happy. Different things make different people happy, so happiness and the pursuit of happiness cannot be the same. For example: I am a quiet type of person who loves to work from home and socializes only once or twice a week. You may be a very gregarious person who works in an office full of people and lunches with a different person each day and goes to a party every Saturday evening. We're both happy, but our lifestyles are very different. Besides that, what you view as something that would produce happiness may not be a priority for me. Maybe it makes you happy to go on wonderful ski vacations twice a year. It might make me happy to go on wonderful vacations in my back yard and to squirrel my money away. Both are fine, and we're both happy.
http://www.sevenarticle.com/article_detail.php?article_id=3315959e
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