What is happiness?

Having all your most basic needs met (shelter, food, proper clothing) plus some love/friendship and your health.

I think you can be happy with horrid health, but it's a hard row to hoe. Thinking of the guy who just died who was a key researcher re amls (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and also a younger guy in the sports world with it now. Articles about them show them as accepting, dealing, still finding some happiness in their days.

I like it when my mind works, I know that sounds like I'm kidding, but it is a primary joy. I love fresh air. I like the sounds of friends voices. I love involvement with food even if I mess up in cooking, the tactility of it. I love play. Humans aren't the only ones who play, but then we share a great trait. I love seeing.

I agree that the basic needs are important, but I put good health at the head of the list.

I think it's important to know and appreciate all of our senses to understand happiness. Most of all, from my perspective, I find that loving all people is important to ones happiness.

I finally figured out how to spell hoe and edited that..

Well, love shilly shallies, but I get your point. It's hard to cast love at horrendously destructive individuals; oh, say, Caligula. But an overview of the complexities of humanity and a certain acceptance of that, understanding of the workings of that, is a good thing for the psych (I posit).

To me happiness is coming home everyday to my wonderful new family, a partner I adore and a beautiful five year old who makes me smile everyday.

Happiness is that equilibrium, where you know who you are and you are able to keep events on an even keel. It has nothing to do with losses in life, such as death of a loved one, divorce, whatever.

I think death of a loved one is a temporary emotional event in everybody's life, and most grow out of it in time. I know when I lost my best friend, I still think about him regularly, but the sadness is now gone.

Happiness is a good old age; but no one can be happy in this society because security has been made a commodity, and no one not rich can own it...Even the rich must fear the condition they are responsible for because people soon find they cannot live with insecurity even though they cannot afford security... The rich who would corner the market on security find that though people resist change, and build all their forms to resist change must at last embrace change if they will own anything but their anxiety, and those who counted on forms like law, and government, and religion to preserve their security find those forms have lost all their meaning while the security a society can only know, all together and equally -must again be shared to be enjoyed...Even people who will sell themselves into slavery to know some secuity find it there as elusive, and they find that the slave who cannot defend his rights individually cannot defend the rights of his society from others, collectively... The slave is not more secure, but only less moral because the moral person takes what he needs and gives to others as they need, and never tries to deny his needs or the needs of others for mere animal survival...It is impossible for anyone to truly be happy in an unhappy society because that society is doomed and done...

HAPPINESS IS PEAC in the SOUL and mind. @ diff things. Though I suffer from inherited clinical depresssion, GOD, YAHWEH, is forever picking me up because I KNOW I suffer from an inherited disease and he has eternal mercy. Happiness is peace in the SOUL, which is the part of us that goes onto eternal life.

I disagree; happiness is being able to establish some goals for yourself, and meeting most of it. I believe good health is essential to happiness - both physical and mental, but to be able to accomplish things in life that you thought were impossible or very difficult provides a level of happiness.

Many people set their goals too high, and they are never able to accomplish what they wanted, and that impacts their happiness for the rest of their life.

I also believe timing and luck has much to do with what one accomplishes in life.

Our generation had it the best; our economy was healthy most of the time, and opportunities and jobs were there for the taking.

You asked for what happiness is ... so how can you disagree with anyone's opinion on this? Fido said what he thought happiness is to him.

What's one thing to one person isn't necessarily the same to another.

Both are valid.

Fido said,


I disagree, so what are you going to do about it?

What can I say to this at this very late hour? I have to go to sleep. None of it matters, anyway, especially when it's so pointless.

Pointless for you, because your point doesn't make any sense. Anyone who claims everybody else can't be happy because of money is wrong. You should understand that simple truth. Yea, go to sleep; you need it.

What is the end of happiness?
When people start quarrel about what it is.

I know what it is when I feel it and I know what it's not.

All I can do about anything is not **** myself... I do not think fools happy only because they are invariably smiling... The less foresight anyone has the more likely they are to seem happy, but I do not take a self imposed blindness for happiness... Look at what the rich do... First they try with trusts controlled by able lawyers and investors to secure the future for their children... If it is possible, they send their children to the best schools to make up for their lack of ambition with as good education... They never think that in securing the future for their children that they may be denying so great future to another child... They never think that in securing an education for their worthless offspring that they may be denying education to many who might better benefit society than any number of children raised in luxury... Now; I do think that control of the future, thought of the future, and preparation for the future ought to be what every society is about, and foresight is the most obvious sign of intelligence...The more we look to the future of our own individual children rather than to the collective children of society the more we will devolve into the image of Rome, or Greece in their decline and spiral into the wrecks they became...The society that does the best for all, and which gives the greatest opportunity to each, and which demands the best of each be returned to the commonwealth has the possibility of long term happiness... Happy people do not exist in an unhappy society any more than an unhappy people can make a happy society... Security, can be shared, but it cannot be denied to many and enjoyed by a few... If we would be happy, it is because security is shared far and wide, and because no person can think to take his good future out of the life of another who must then know only despair...

Joy is of the moment, but happiness is a state that people share... I once talked to an operator off one of the jobs I was on, who had the misfortune of having his load line engage while he was catting the rig back... It was a big rig, a manatowok 4100, and he didn't even feel it get into a strain as it picked up 90 foot of jib and brought it all down on his head... The headache ball landed right in front of the drums, right beside his seat, in fact... This was a big old thing that I could never have gotten my arms half way around... I told him he had to be about the bravest man in the world to sit right there as that ball fell next to him in the cab... He said: I never saw it coming... It was not a matter of bravery, but of ignorance, and once it fell, it was done falling, so what was the point of jumping and running then???

Human beings are intelligent enough to recognize the dangers that lie ahead, and to make all reasonable preparations...You have kids... You do the best you can to prepare them... Then you stand aside, catch a few breaths of free air waiting for the end to catch you, and if you have done enough right, done your best, been honorable to all and just, then you can be prepared for death or the after life...

The goal of intelligent people is never happiness, but survival, long term, and indefinite...Happiness is the result, but never the goal of a well led life...And the fact is that when you see a society crumbling about you, it is nearly impossible to call yourself happy... Look at the cynics and stoics of Rome and Greece... They rejected knowledge, and advanced individualism... What else did they have??? They could see their societies were lost, and it was every man for himself...They would not even breed for fear of human obligation...