Happiness!

A LOT OF... AND ABOUT HAPPINESS

How HAPPY you are ?

THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS – DESMOND MORRIS - 2004
The words we use now to express our major motivations are revealing: killing( the business man hunting); slay- an actor on the scene; target, aim, tracking down( a cancer symptom for a researcher), trap etc.
Happiness means many things to different people and yet it can be stressed that happiness comes from satisfying our basic urge to hunt down prey, which has been transformed and elevated into so many fulfilling and creative pursuits today.
The cause of so much unhappiness today comes from the loss of the awareness of pure human nature in many of us, lost in sophistication.
Those with creative lives, full of variety and changes, with visible goals at which they can aim the efforts , are the lucky ones. They can live in the way humans lives and evolved: planning, striving, achieving, taking risks.
But the agricultural, industrial revolution and the technology took the natural live and replaced it with bring tasks, movements, so, happiness became something to be looked after, extra working hours; and, instead, we found drugs, alcohol, diseases.
Happiness can be described as 5 types:
1. The Target Happiness- the kind that stems from our ancient hunting past;
2. Competitive Happiness – the joy of winning, derived from our social background, as we evolved in small tribes.
3. Cooperative Happiness, based on our need to support one another to survive.
4. Sensual Happiness – exists because we didn’t loose our needs to eat, drink, mate and keep warm
5. Cerebral Happiness –is the result of our brain resourses, which brings its own rewards.
Target Happiness – The Achiever-
It stems in the human nature- intensely curious, exploratory and inventive. It has 3 stages: anticipatory, the appetitive and the consumptive..
We are anticipating new projects, new experiences and new challenges and their contemplation makes us happy.
Then, when we start doing it, we enjoy being busy and productive, and, at the end, if we are successful, we can enjoy an almost orgasmic happiness with the sudden satisfaction we feel. A short pause and we are off again.
If we succeed creating more and more this kind of jobs and preoccupations instead of frustrating and boring activities, mankind will know more about happiness. But it depends on us, how high sights we settle, and if we know enough ourselves to be able to set and reach them and be happy, or to remain disappointed, soured, putting the blame on life.
We shouldn’t forget that happiness is a fleeting, flitting, dynamic thing. It is not when things are good; it is when they are getting better.
COMPETITIVE HAPPINESS- THE WINNER
In the first form there is a goal, but there is no rival involved; here there is always a rivality the cause and the effect of someone’s happiness.
One of the most vicious definition of happiness that can be found is : “ Happiness is an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another.”
When we laugh at jokes we should remember this definition, because in each joke, there is a looser who we laugh and are happy about.
A less worrying form of the same definition is:” Happiness is a pleasure not shared with others”.
THE COOPERATIVE HAPPINESS- THE HELPER
This is the other side of the coin with its origin in our tribal way of living and the need to help each other from external aggressiveness.
It is a kind of selfishness in a different form, a competitive happiness in another way.
Humanitarian organizations, charities are happy to save all mankind’s tribe in one, and some expanded it to other species, so the pets are cared, loved, helped, more than humans even, for the happiness of some, to come true !
GENETIC HAPPINESS – The relative
Sensual Happiness – The Hedonist
Cerebral happiness – The intellectual
This involves creativity, inventions, artistic work; these persons are happy with what they are doing, not thinking of a goal, a price, a bonus, a specific result, except the one from their point of view. They are dreamers from others points of view as happiness.
They are classy, not selfish, although we can see them like that- they care only about themselves and their object, not the result as a long-term one.
The Rhythmic Happiness – The Dancer- lost in music and motion, brain centers stop thinking and emotions secrets endorphins. This is a way of purifying the intellectual work and maintain a natural, healthy euphoria.
The laughter is a sourse of happiness, because the brain is stimulated, oxygenated; the first laugh of a child comes as a result of a danger which didn’t happen, but he/she worried about. So, we laugh, we are happy, because no unpleasant danger existed!

Accidental Happiness- The Fortunate
Happiness comes from “ happy”=hap=Old Norse =Good Luck.
So, if we want to be a linguistic purist, we are happy only if we have passed a lucky event.!
THE NATURE OF HAPPINESS
Definition: the sudden surge of pleasure we feel when something gets better. The key to understanding happiness is that it only exists in an intense form when there has just been a dramatic improvement in some aspect of our lives. This moment of improvement can be anything from a major experience, to something trivial as a cold drink on a hot day.
Because it is linked to change, it is not a lasting sensation, but rather a fleeting one.
It is also clear that it comes in many forms and can be found in different contexts.
For some, the achievement of an ambition brings a powerful moment of sometimes overwhelming happiness.
For others, who set their goals too high, the inability to reach their goals makes their live a complete disappointment. For the luckier ones, modest goals makes them happy, but in a continous lifetime process.
The secret of increasing target happiness lies in accepting that the human species is not suited to a life of trivial repetitive behavior that is lacking of serious challenges.
Day to day duties shouldn’t stop us fixing some reachable, realistic goals, to sustain our challenges and to offer modalities of happiness.
For the competitive type, winning is a sourse of happiness, so, contests are the ideal place. The charity ones, can create more for their care for the tribe; the artists have their own means of dreaming.
Contrary to popular opinion, levels of happiness are not linked to education, age or blank balance.
The differences stay in the individual personalities. Each of us has his/her own “ set-point” level. The optimists, pessimists, the realists, intro- extraverted persons have different levels of being happy.
DEFINITIONS OF HAPPINESS
Happiness is life’s purpose- Dalai Lama
Happiness is an Attitude: Happiness is… knowing that you do not necessarily require happiness- William Saroyan.
Happiness is … not the nam who seems thus to others, but who seems thus to himself- Publilius Sylvius
Happiness is not a reward, it is a consequence.- R.G. Ingersoll.
Happiness is not the number of blessings, but only our attitude towards them. – A. Solzhenitsyn.
3.Happiness is Achievement: Happiness is wanting what you get. Success is getting what you want. Anonymous.
Happiness is a way station between too little and too much- Channing Pollock.
Happiness is not having what you want, but wanting what you have- Hyman Schachtel.
4. Happiness is to be found in Trivia
Happiness is to be very busy with the unimportant –E. Newton.
Happiness springs from temperate habits and simple wishes- James Wood.
Happiness is… produced by little advantages that occur every day- B. Franklin
5 Happiness as Negative
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness- Don Marquis.
Happines is… the occasional episode in the general drama of pain- Thomas Hardy
Happiness is not being pained in body and troubled in mind – Thomas Jafferson