What is Happiness?

Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared - Buddha.

What exactly is happiness? We tell people we are happy, but what does 'happy' actually mean? Is it something tangible - something we can touch and experience? Or is it more ephemeral - something we know exists but cannot  explain?


There are things in this world that make me happy, those whom I love and love me in return down to foods that although unhealthy offer a warm and cosy glow of comfort. Does that mean that happiness is the same as pleasure? If it does, is there a happy/sad principal to work alongside the pleasure/pain principal?


I looked up the definition of happiness and this is what I found: 'Happiness is a state of mind or feeling characterized by contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, or joy - wikipedia.' So it's a state of mind then? So all of that time that we spend looking for things that make us happy is a waste of time? What we need to do is alter our state of mind into a mixture of all of the 'good feelings' that we have ever experienced? All of that soul searching, reaching inside ourselves to find contentment and peace or balance is really a quest for happiness then.


Perhaps next time I go looking for that happy feeling at that lurks inside a tub of ice cream, or in that bag of marshmallows, I should instead try and spark the memory of the happy feeling that they gave me the last time I met them, and save myself some calories!


Reprogramming yourself is hard, trying to alter the way that your brain perceives things is no easy task, and if there is an easy way to do it I haven't found it. We all want to be happy don't we? Yet we are all looking in the wrong places, each of us believing that happiness comes from something tangible, ignoring the fact that we have the ability to create happiness simply by altering the way that we think.