Say I had the key, then I would have to know what door to open. Sorry for being cryptic but happiness is one of those vast terms, probably as vast the happy proponents that know how to get it. I’m not necessarily being critical, but I think it useful to look at other ways to define happiness because this term could mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people.
I’ve almost read the 4 hour work week and Tim Ferriss, the author has an interpretation that makes sense. Tim preferred the term excitement over happiness as he points out that when you’re exited about life you want to get up in the morning, you’re happy to take risks and do the things that an overburdening fear would stop you from doing. You’d strive to “make each day count” as Leo puts it to keep that excitement high. So by default, if you’re excited you’re happy. This definitely has a lot of appeal for me. The only thing is that when I think of being exited all the time I picture this kid who lived across the road from me when I was about 8 years old. He couldn’t stop, he drank too much red cordial.
So where it might fall short is that realistically you just can’t always be excited. There are events where it’s not even appropriate to be that way. I’ll have to take the cliché extreme for lack of a better analogy, but excited at a funeral – this is just not right (maybe for some – no judgment for you guys out there, we’re all different!). So does this mean we can’t be happy all the time? Probably, but I think there is a lot of merit in being able to experience a range of states, feelings, thoughts etc. Otherwise what’s the purpose in having these? And isn’t having a range what make’s us human?
