What is Happiness?

[James]

The acceptance that nothing happens on purpose and everything is meaningless

[RVconsultant]

@Hermit

What is the difference between happiness and joy for you?

[Victor]

I always log in to some interesting question, so it seems. Happiness can’t be defined in a post, and everyone has personal theories on it. I won’t explain happiness here, because it is not an end in itself, only a means to it. We humans are goal setting and getting machines. Happiness is not an actual thing. It is an assumption which is there to keep us moving towards the goals. And we assume we’re happy when we keep moving. I believe chasing happiness is the best way to guarantee “unhappiness”. Because chasing a state and/or feeling is like chasing the sun, you can’t do it. And because of obvious reasons, everyone from media to self-help is giving you emotional highs and lows to get you to working. Happiness is associated with things, and hence you’ll end up chasing things in pursuit of chasing happiness.

The key to assuming happiness lies in being indifferent. Now if I expand on that, the post would become painfully long. Here’s something I found in older posts:

The foundations - subliminal - the nuances of pure freedom

Master Key: Indifference

It is the most powerful practice for self mastery. We can be indifferent to social programming, we can be indifferent to meanings and tags. We could be indifferent to emotional impacts things have on an everyday man. This is what I think is freedom. We can be indifferent to all the unconscious instincts and cravings. All it requires is awareness and a strong will.

[Luther24]

@King

I somehow think cave-men must at least be easily contented with very simple stuff in life.

cave-man here.

Can absolutely confirm