What is happiness?

I might add to your and Osso's quality list ... having hope. Hope for your future and the future of loved ones and the world.

Ossobuco's perspective is, in my judgement, the best--and that is what "happiness" is, a positive perspective on the world AS IT IS, even those aspects whichwe would change if we could. She loves prosaic things like fresh air, the sounds of friend's voices, involvement with food, and seeing. All things we take for granted. In other words, Ossobuco takes very little for granted. Happiness is the perspective she brings to her life, not just the feeling she gets from the good things that happen to her.
Look up Nietzsche's principle: Amor fati.

I agree that hope is necessary ingredient to happiness; many people give up, and even children commit suicide without knowing what their future holds.

I think osso would be very happy living in Italy.

Me too.

-Or caring what the neighbors will think... What it takes to get kids to perform at their best is a stark realization of what reality holds for them... They must accept great debt for an education which makes them a slave of those with the ability to help them pay it off.... Then they have to sell one third or more of their lives not counting the cost or the time on the road out of every five days... And they must give the best of every day to the boss, and save only seconds for their children or spouse... And through it all they must guard their words, and keep their politics is tune with the bosses, or secret, and climb the ladder of sucess looking out for the assholes above, and the cut throats below, all the time passing every extra moment dreaming of payday, vacation, quiting time or retirment if they think they can afford it... There is no affinity, no brotherhood, no common cause, no soliderity... It is every man for himself, and woman, dog eat dog and dog eat ****, and anxiety without limit or end... No wonder so few are happy, and what little wonder that people prefer death to drudgery, heartbreak, and dishonor... Most kids are idiots, but the ones who believe it will never be different and never get better have a brain in their head....Who cares what the neighbors think... Death is sweet victory for the free... Those who sell themselves and their lives for little more than the chance to reproduce their suffering in a new generation are whores... Can a whore be happy???

Your generalities do not apply universally; many take it upon themselves to reach goals they believe are necessary for their and their families security and happiness.

Grins..

of course, if I lived there and thus was thrown into dealing with the myriad complications of italian life, many of which re bureaucracy make little sense to me at the same time much else does make sense, I might be less enchanted as I walk through a city.

Thanks for the reference to amor fati. I happen to have a crumbly old paperback copy of M. Aurelius' Meditations, but haven't read them in a while now.

What that muckraker said about marriage in his book on the Chicago slaughter houses is especially true today: Marriage is the curse of the working class... Out of honor at least, men would stick with their families and slave to support them... Now women are left on their own to support their thankless babes who must raise themselves alone... They can't even have an abortion without difficulty... They know first hand the meaninglessness of life, though it is not naturally so... Some one took their meaning to sell it for money, and all they really have to share is the poison that is their lives; and unwanted babies are the most hateful disease any society can suffer...

The natural lower limit of wages is what it takes to keep meat on bones.... Women are the prefered worker in many countries simply because they must work so much harder to keep their babies alive... And what would a free market be if employers could not take advantage of surplus labor to drive down the value of all labor???There used to be a relationship between employers and employees; but now it is all a mattor of calculation... You might better ask your computer the meaning of mercy as ask any employer for more of what you earn... The labor market is a buyers market...

The trouble with hope is that it does not permit us to be realistic, to adjust to what is, in the hope of something better than what is real, right now. Remember when all the miseries of life escaped from Pandora's Box, one that remained was Hope--so that man can continue to suffer.

Do you mean to tell us that you never had hope? What was your motivation to improve yourself?

Hope, as in dreams, is only that spark in life that makes us believe there is something better by working hard, studying hard, and trying one's best to accomplish some distant goal(s). Some reach that goal, and some don't; the environment in which one lives, the opportunity for education, mobility, and good health has much to do with the chances for reaching success.

Well yes in the sense that I've generally expected my ambitious efforts to have a decent likelihood of success. But when my wife was dying of brain cancer I went--while an atheist--to the religious chapel at the hospital with the desperate hope of generating a miracle. I soon gave that up accepting the inevitability of her death. With that my pain, while never gone, lessened. I don't know if that would happen with everyone in the same situation. I was also meditating regularly at the time, something which I think helped to adapt me to the real present as opposed to a miraculous ideal. I guess there's a difference between statistically reasonable and unreasonable fantastical hope.

When my sister's husband had Parkinsons and suffered from a heart attack, she kept praying for his recovery. She truly believed her prayers would be answered. When he passed away, she left the church for about one year before returning.

She is now remarried, and seems very happy. She and her husband visit Hawaii often.