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Happiness - My definition




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Today, I  encountered a question when I was reading a book and got stuck at that. This caused a plethora of thoughts to flock my mind and now I see a sense of taking another stride towards self-awareness.
 It is a question of 'happiness'.
What is your definition of happiness?
The purpose of this blog is to solve this question.
Happiness is an abstract concept. It is a feeling that every one of us experience. However, it is a feeling which most of the theorists or economists or placing it the other way, learned men are unable to define. However, there is a general understanding that mortal beings' ultimate goal is the pursuit of happiness. Aristotle put it this way "Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim, and end of human existence".
Is happiness the purpose or the purpose is happiness?
As Aristotle said, it is the purpose of life to find happiness. Then there is another view which says, having a meaning and purpose to life is happiness. A little analysis is needed here.
When Aristotle says life's purpose and the end is happiness, he means happiness in a much broader sense. He tried to explain the motivations that people have, to do a particular task or live a particular experience. He is basically trying to explain human goals which will be guided by the feeling of happiness that they get by doing it. For instance, people run after wealth because they feel that it makes them happy.
The second view- having a meaning and a purpose for life is happiness.
This view is that we must have a purpose in life to be happy. When it says we need to have a meaningful purpose, it is addressing the problem of misunderstanding that may arise in the first view. Let me elaborate:
Have you ever seen a girl always indulging in shopping and merrymaking, worrying about beauty and only beauty?  Most of you might have come across such girls ( boys too will be there who live a purposeless life). Adding to it, they have a reason behind it- 
"There is one life, live it (joyfully)". The reason has not got any problem but these humans have got a problem in interpreting it. They interpret happiness as a mere material aggrandizement. Most of the times people don't even interpret it, thanks to the advertisements and movies which shape our needs and wants. 
 The second view helps us to get away from that trap-the trap of ignorance. It thus mentions that we need a meaning to our life, a meaningful purpose to our life which makes us happy. Hence these seemingly contradicting views are in fact complementary to each other. They help us understand the true nature of life and happiness.
My Happiness:
After a dedicated thinking, I have sorted out what makes me happy and how to explain it. Let me put it here.
 It is the sense of growth that I feel makes me happy. That includes material, intellectual, emotional and spiritual growth. After all, the basic characteristic of life is growth. So I derive happiness when I feel that I am living. So, those things that I do and experience in the process of living make me happy because they contain an element of growth in themselves. For instance, reading 'where the head is held high, knowledge is free....' gives me great joy because there is an emotion that gets triggered in me along with my intellectual understanding of the context etc.,  If I believe in free and quality education as a principle because of my past experiences and I make that happen, by teaching kids for free, it gives me immense joy.
Material pursuits also give me joy and they are an essential component of life but the intellectual, emotional and spiritual pursuits overshadow the sadness that is obtained from losing or ignoring material pursuits. This is for good because it guarantees true happiness to me and people around me. Besides all these, as Dalai Lama puts it," More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other's well being, is the source of happiness".









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