am i happy?
12/04/2010
Today I caught a friend online, and he asked me if I’m happier these days. I think he asked that because months ago he asked if I was happy and I said no. And I guess perhaps he’s taking it like alchoholism, after you fall into unhappiness and decide to do something about it, you take it a day at a time.
I used to think happiness was a definite state: you either are or you’re not. If you’re laughing all the time, smiling with not a care in the world, that’s it. When you don’t have to go to work for a few days and are lying on a beach somewhere doing absolutely nothing, that’s it. If you get what you want when you want it, that’s it.
But is it?
Is happiness doing what makes me happy all the time? Is happiness contingent on someone else? Is it something bestowed upon? I’ve no clue. How did I go around chasing something so badly defined? Is it even something you can go after like a turkey for dinner?
Am I happy though? Perhaps. If happiness is a scale, I would suppose I am happier than I was a year ago. The presence of a possible long term goal, however vaguely defined, is quite motivating. The only thing that’s clear to me for now is that perhaps looking at happiness as an absolute term is unrealistic. Life, on the whole, is pretty imperfect, unbalanced in a sense. Therefore to expect absolutes in a concept such as happiness was a legacy from childhood when the world was more white and black.
So am I happy? I am happier. But it’s not like some kind of body fat measurement where you can say, if you past a certain percentage, you’re obese. Am I happy on the whole? That’s more a frame of mind issue, and I think I am inherently positive enough to be happy on the whole. I am somewhat content. There is lots to be glad for, taking everything around me into account, so there is little reason to be unhappy. Unfortunately the lack of unhappiness is not the definition, really, of happiness. So I guess I am somewhat happy.
Too bad it takes a ton of internal monologue and a lame soliloquy to answer it. IM conversations are over in a flash. Perhaps I can answer the question better next time.
