What does it mean to be happy?

Many people come to therapy with this idea of obtaining true happiness and contentment. That perhaps by engaging in such an activity, one will achieve the enlightenment of joy.

I think more often than not, we try to find an external source for our happiness – a lover, a good song, or the latest smartphone. I feel increasingly strongly over time that we are reluctant to take ownership of our own happiness, to find that happiness within ourselves. I say this as someone, like everyone else, prone to outsourcing my happiness (my ever-growing book pile and closet full of jumpers that are just too great to clear out).

I know I have had my moments of wanting to pick up a guidebook that says ‘how to be happy’ and gives me a clear 3-step programme to guarantee happiness, money back if not achieved. Alas, I have looked, and there is no such book. 

I find myself wondering: why do we live like this? The craving for some definitive space of happiness generally leaves us more miserable and often more disappointed when things don’t live up to our expectations. The materialistic joy often only offers brief moments of satisfaction before we need another hit of dopamine to fix our craving.

I expect it is hard for many of us to find contentment in the mundane, to tolerate the ordinariness of life, particularly in a world where you are measured on your number of likes, your fashion sense or body type, the size of your house or the type of car you own. We chase and chase and chase and are left feeling more empty than when we started. Is there a way to resettle the scale and redefine what it means to be happy?

Two types of happiness

It is thought there are two types of happiness: hedonic well-being (the pursuit of pleasure) and eudaimonic well-being (feeling a sense of purpose) (Akhtar, M, 2019).

When the balance between these two is struck, then a state of fulfilment is reached. Both of these seem to require an intentional act toward something, a reaching outward and inward in equal parts. It feels important to recognise these states because I am not by any stretch of the imagination saying to give up the nice things in life (you won’t see me parting with my books any time soon!), but rather finding that balance, finding a way to give out and take in.

Finding joy in the ordinary

Pema Chodran (2008), whose work I find has so much to offer, writes how we must find a way to ‘rejoice in the ordinary.’ She often writes about how when we are reaching for the next thing – the new job, the house extension, the goal weight – we are denying ourselves the acceptance of who we are in the present moment. We are consistently communicating to ourselves that we are not good enough as we are. Instead of reaching, she encourages us to stay, to commit to ourselves and in such a commitment, joy can be found.

It feels important to say that life is painful sometimes, and recently, it has been particularly scary. It can be hard to know how to hold happiness when things feel chaotic and overwhelming. I feel the path to happiness is not to deny ourselves our pain or sadness; it is imperative that we feel these things, but, as Gawdat (2017) writes, to accept the pain and let go of suffering. In doing so, we can find a way to move forward with the pain and find happiness that can live alongside it. 

In the end, I suppose happiness is that commitment to ourselves, an acceptance of ourselves and our flaws and infatuations. It is the commitment to be grateful, to be grounded; a commitment to find something of joy in the mundane, in the everyday, in the act of staying with yourself. Happiness is not made up of only positives but is the amalgamation of the good, the bad and the in-between and accepting that this is, ultimately, good enough.

References

Akhtar, M (2019) The Little Book of Happiness, Gaia: London

Chödrön, P (2008) The Pocket Pema Chödrön, Shambala Publications INC: Colorado

Gawdat, M (2017), Solve for Happy: Engineer your path to joy, North Star Way: New York