What Is Happiness, Really?

You might be searching for something you haven’t defined yet.

“I just want to be happy.” The mantra of millions marching through their days, waiting for the right person, the right opportunity, or the right offer to come along, expecting it to hold the ever-elusive “happiness” in its hands.

I find the concept of happiness to be a fascinating one, because it’s subjective. That is, it means something different to each individual person you ask about it.

Sure, there are similarities. We usually want to love and be loved in return. We usually want some level of financial stability or independence. We usually want to do work that matters, and feel that our lives have meaning.

The nuances, though, are where so many of us get caught up.

What exactly does that life look like for you? The one that makes you “happy”?

Here’s where I throw a wrench into the conversation: Is happiness even the right thing to be looking for?

The feeling, the emotion of happiness, is much like other emotions we experience during the course of the day, which is to say that they come and go.

We feel happy, and then we don’t. We’re frustrated, annoyed, sad, curious, nostalgic, sentimental, and then…happy again.