Happiness

[poliphilo]

Happiness is when you don't know you're happy- when you're absorbed in whatever you're doing and things just flow. If you start to think, "this is happiness" you've distanced yourself from the pure state and the happiness is already in the past.

Comments

[balirus.livejournal.com]

If happiness lives in the vacuum of its acknowledgement, can there be lasting happiness?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't think there can be. I'm not even sure it would be desireable. We need unhappiness to spur us on. The best I can imagine is flipping in and out of a state on continuing happiness. The happiness is there; you just can't access it all the time. I think I'm basically a happy person, but that doesn't stop me from being anxious, depressed and miserable much of the time.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I meant "state of happiness". There doesn't seem to be a way of editing comments. Am I missing something?

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

I agree. Clinical depression as a real illness aside, I think that sometimes people think there's something wrong with them if they do get sad, miserable & unhappy on a regular basis - the prevailing feeling being that a person ought to be either happy or at least "just ok" all the time. I think that's unrealistic.

There are so many shades of perception and reaction to this life, this place we are in these bodies. The lows make the highs sweeter, make them possible by contrast.

Happiness

[craftyailz.livejournal.com]

Sometimes though is recognising unhappiness for what it is. It transfers itself over to the physical sometimes just to get recognised.

Re: Happiness

[amritarosa.livejournal.com]

True. Looking at these feelings directly seems the best way. Harder to do than to say, though :-)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I think of happiness as lying near the middle of the scale. Beyond happiness are states like joy and ecstacy which are certainly only sustainable for very brief periods. Happiness is what I felt the other day when I was sitting on the beach chucking stones in the sea. But, yes, we can only know we have been happy if we have also been unhappy.

[balirus.livejournal.com]

I think like you that happiness lives mostly in our attempts to fulfill our motivations. I'd add though that it doesn't matter whether those motivations or goals are joyful in nature. So many people's happiness is inextricably bound to their conflicts and their frustrations. My behaviorist leanings are about to show, but if people didn't receive an emotional benefit from the attempt itself then their motivations would change. As The Mamas & The Papas put it so well, some of us are glad to be unhappy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Creative people are often manic-depressive. Happiness is a fairly uncreative state I think. Creativity comes out of extreme experience- whether despairing or joyful.