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The Most Overlooked Form Of Happiness
Do you want to be happy?
I mean, obviously we want to be happy. My instincts tell me that happiness can’t be the only goal, or at least it can’t be the short-term goal. You know, because heroin achieves happiness in the short term. So, what the hell are we talking about, happiness?
When I think about the goals I have in my life — to succeed, to have children, to do good for others — all of these must be the pursuit of happiness, right? What else could I be up to? Do I wish to accumulate good memories, or do I want to lower the likelihood of a suffering in any given moment? What about suffering that leads to a great victory? Do you have answers to this that I don’t? I have a feeling you don’t. I mean, a lot of us here on Medium are interested in this question, at least obliquely. I see a lot of articles about how to achieve the things that we conventionally assume will make us happy. But, will they? What if happiness is seriously just a state of mind we can achieve without external validation? If our goal is truly to be happy, wouldn’t we at least consider it?
In his book, The Pursuit of Unhappiness: The Elusive Psychology of Well-Being, Daniel Haybron breaks down happiness into three categories. Each category has subcategories, all of which are on a spectrum.
