What is your 'Happiness?'

[TimeAsylums]

Alright, well I leave to Costa Rica tomorrow, so I was trying to spam/fluff a lot less xD, anyway:

What is your form of 'Happiness?'

Is it the American Dream? - specifically, what?
Just a significant other? what about them?
Living in the perfect place? which is what?
Is it being able to smoke n toke?

Curious on what, what do you want out of life, from it?
Nothing? Everything?

Full of passion, empty?

Have you become content?

I'd just like to know,

What is happiness to you, and how will you achieve it?
Dreams, desires?

What gives your life its meaning? ( yaknow, excluding you nihilists )


is it anything like what socionics predicts it might be?

Spoiler

http://www.socionics.com/articles/hiddena.htm

ENTp, ESTp => to be loved
INTj, INFj => to be healthy
ESFj, ESTj => to be perfect
ISFp, INFp => to understand
ENFj, ENTj => to be wealthy
ISTj, ISFj => to believe
ESFp, ENFp => to know
INTp, ISTp => to love

 

[Nezaros]

Happiness is a mountain sunset, city lights at night, clouds shifting over the ocean. It's being with the people I like, and sometimes even meeting new ones. It's good food, good people, and a good view. It's seeing new places and revisiting the old ones. It's not needing to spend money to have a good time. It's independent of the materialism that is the American Dream, but it can indulge in it every once in a while. It's the ability to experience the world, and knowing how to enjoy all of it.

I have no doubt that a significant other would make me much happier, but there's no sense in groaning about it while I lack one. I just need to look forward and take what comes. I know what I want out of life. I may not know how to get there, but half the point is to figure that out.

 

[Brontosaurie]

Happiness is a mountain sunset, city lights at night, clouds shifting over the ocean.

happiness is a transitory state of reward

 

[Nezaros]

happiness is a transitory state of reward

Happiness is indeed fleeting, but that's why it isn't living in a suburban home with two kids and a white picket fence, slowly wasting away.

 

[Solitaire U.]

Happiness is indeed fleeting, but that's why it isn't living in a suburban home with two kids and a white picket fence, slowly wasting away.

Credulous to judge, in the manner you have, your ideal of 'happiness' against someone else's.

We are all slowly 'wasting away'. How we define 'happiness' within that ongoing inevitability might very well equate to a comfortable suburban sprawl. Happiness is, after all, a close friend of comfort.

 

[Brontosaurie]

Happiness is indeed fleeting, but that's why it isn't living in a suburban home with two kids and a white picket fence, slowly wasting away.

i have a set of parents who fulfill the suburban dream. they love clouds and the sun and nice things and stuff like that.

 

[Nezaros]

I thought it was a given that the answers would be subjective.

 

[kantor1003]

A beautiful moment.

(the point being, of course, to arrive at something self-contained, something, with Aristotle, good in itself and not for some further goal. I could have stated pleasure, but I think 'the beautiful moment' might be less misleading because it doesn't lend itself to being confused with sensual pleasure, and with sensual pleasure alone, the way 'pleasure' might easily do.)

 

[Brontosaurie]

I thought it was a given that the answers would be subjective.

yes.


but i disagree savouring the beauty of nature is at odds with enjoying a safe, convenient, conventional lifestyle. rather the opposite: the beauty of nature, as commonly construed, is above all a curious unfounded meme which caters to traditionalists.

sunsets and suburban stagnation belong to the same preferential category of happiness.

 

[TimeAsylums]

The answers are indeed intended to be subjective, open to interpretation based on your own set of perspectives. So assuming you do wish to criticize another's preferential way of life, i suppose you are also open to do so,

but I'm just curious what it is you all want and desire.

oh mah EP self and 'sharing'

 

[Brontosaurie]

but I'm just curious what it is you all want and desire.

All You Need Is Love Tu TuRuRuRuuuuuuu

 

[Nezaros]

yes.


but i disagree savouring the beauty of nature is at odds with enjoying a safe, convenient, conventional lifestyle. rather the opposite: the beauty of nature, as commonly construed, is above all a curious unfounded meme which caters to traditionalists.

sunsets and suburban stagnation belong to the same preferential category of happiness.

Suburban living is a mode of existence. Sunsets are just one small part of life.

 

[Duxwing]

Happiness? I'll need a paragraph or two.

Every muscle in my body dully aches with pleasure as I kneel just ahead of the forecastle of a sloop, steadying myself upon the slowly rolling deck by grabbing a mainsail guy in my left hand: my sleepy eyes gaze at the dappled pools of gold cast by sunset on the inky blue. The golden disk sets on the evening that a couple of close friends and I had spent preparing to launch our craft; my shirt is light and my tough cargo khakis loaded with straps and hooks; my hands within the blue, black, and white sailing gloves that I have had for five years; my well-loved baseball cap sits high upon my brow, a warm reminder of the evening chill that drifts upon my skin.

My bedclothes lie waiting in my bunk, clean and folded, and the devolai that I had eaten in port radiates a toasty fullness through me. I have the morning watch, and the land of dreams awaits my arrival.

-Duxwing

 

[Amagi82]

Happiness is a new discovery.

Happiness is an intellectual connection with a friend.

Happiness is the satisfaction of completing a project.

Happiness is working on a project you care about.

 

[SpaceYeti]

Happiness is (poetic BS).

I like it when things I like happen.

 

[doncarlzone]

Being truly happy is just a rare chemical reaction in our brains. In this state, we see everything in a positive light because of a recent event. This probably happened to me twice in the last five years.

Striving for happiness is irrational as it is biologically impossible to maintain.

 

[Cognisant]

The lulz, the pure joy of having an affect.

The self craves validation, as we see the world we want the world to see us, for there to be feedback upon our output, to look into someone's eyes and see them looking back into our own, to write on a forum where we can safely assume someone else will read it, better yet to get a response.

Why else are we all here?

 

[The Gopher]

Everything! The world and people! Bad music, love; depression, anger, excitement, adrenaline; fear. I am not happy I am what happiness channels it's energy through.

*may possibly be on an emotional high right now*

 

[Brontosaurie]

Suburban living is a mode of existence. Sunsets are just one small part of life.

i suppose you wanted to contrast acknowledgement of the transience of happiness with the vain chase for constant happiness through overly safe, dull living.

the problem is that the examples of transient happiness you cited, are often most enjoyed by the SJ, safety-oriented people. probably because they are not really transient, at least not in the complexity/synergy/synchronicity sense: they are predictable and secure. the enjoyment is an institution, a tradition and not lustful succumbing to da present moment at all.

 

[Nezaros]

i suppose you wanted to contrast acknowledgement of the transience of happiness with the vain chase for constant happiness through overly safe, dull living.

the problem is that the examples of transient happiness you cited, are often most enjoyed by the SJ, safety-oriented people. probably because they are not really transient, at least not in the complexity/synergy/synchronicity sense: they are predictable and secure. the enjoyment is an institution, a tradition and not lustful succumbing to da present moment at all.

I meant that there are many ways and places to find happiness; a sunset is just one of innumerable examples. Happiness is by nature transient. Any positive state will eventually become the norm, and one is no longer happy, but content. I would argue that anybody who thinks they're happy with suburban living is merely content with stagnation but it's not for me to tell them what they ought to feel.

Personally, happiness necessitates variation. I contrast happiness with enjoyment because the former is merely a state of positive emotion while the latter is an active feeling during some activity. It's a stronger, but more fleeting form of happiness.

Either way, however, my happiness is not being rooted in one place, knowing exactly what the next few years will bring me. That isn't living, that is dying. But just because I feel that way doesn't mean I presume to tell others that to be happy with that is wrong. I understand that each of us has different emotional needs and finds enjoyment and happiness in different aspects of life. My perspective is just that I need to experience to be happy. The beauty of nature is an experience. It makes no difference to me whether the sessile find joy in it as well.

 

[Solitaire U.]

but I'm just curious what it is you all want and desire.

A comfortable, secure, owned free and clear home in a nice, quiet, friendly neighborhood would make me very happy, I think. In fact, I can't imagine a higher plane of recurring happiness (for me) than being in perfect harmony with my living space.

Sure, I'll enjoy the sunset while I'm driving home, but there will be another one of those tomorrow (and another, and another). I just want the dubious comfort of a living environment I sincerely want to return to, again and again, and then again for the last time, to die.

One wo/man's contentment with stagnation is another's long-term happiness, I suppose.