What is happiness? | An analysis
Understanding the concept of absolute happiness is crucial. Stay tuned for my next blog on "How to be Happy?" for a deeper understanding. Happiness is a state of mind derived from sensations produced by tangible and intangible objects.
Introduction
In this blog, we are going to visit, what is the nature of the happiness, we experience in our daily lives. We first try to analyze the origin of happiness. Then we try to explore its true nature.
In the last blog, I have written about “what do we want in life?“. In the previous blog, I concluded that everything we do in life has an ultimate motive: to be happy. Link to my last blog: what-do-i-want-in-life?
In this blog, we will go over another crucial question, “What is happiness?“. Isn’t it a silly thing to ask? We experience and seek it throughout our life. But experiencing something and knowing something are very two different things. We see the light, but knowing what light is, is another thing.
Why is the question so important?
In the movie “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy“, the hyperdimensional beings build a supercomputer to find the answer to the question “What is the ultimate meaning of our life?”. The conversation went as follows.
Hyper beings👽: We want to know the answer to the ultimate question. Supercomputer💻: Well, what is the ultimate question? Hyper beings👽: Don’t you know, it is “The Ultimate Question”. Supercomputer💻: I don’t know the ultimate question. Can you say it? Hyper beings👽: What is the meaning of all of this? The meaning of our life. Supercomputer💻: Ok. Meet me in a million years. I will compute the answer to the question. Then the hyper beings went to the supercomputer after a million years. Hyper beings👽: Have you found the answer. Supercomputer💻: Yeah. The answer was 43. The supercomputer explained that they didn’t define the question well. The supercomputer said, “Questions are important than answers. Without right questions, one cannot find the required answer.” Then the computer said it would create another computer to find the question. I don’t want to spoil the surprise. If you wish, you can watch the movie.
So, it is more important to understand and define the question correctly to find the answer. Hence, to know “how to be happy?” We have to know “what is happiness?”.
How is happiness produced?
How to find out, what is happiness? The scientific thing to do is analyze its properties and origin and try the best possible explanation we can deduct from the facts. So, first, let us try to understand how it is produced? From a scientific perspective, I can say that a part of the brain is more stimulated when we are happy. So, stimulation in a particular part of the brain produces happiness. So, to be happy, we have to stimulate a specific part of the brain.
How could we do that? I have an idea, we can attach some electrodes to our brain, and we can be happy all the time.
But it is a bad idea. Not because we don’t have the technology yet. But we will drop dead just by doing that thing and being happy. We need to function for the sustenance of us and the world.
Source of happiness
Lets analyze again . Let us try to understand the source of happiness by finding things that make us happy and the process of keeping us happy.
Tangible Source
Let us consider a situation. Let us consider ice cream🍧. We all like ice cream. But if you are an adult, you may have some more important worries than ice cream, and they make you happy more than ice cream. You can also consider them instead of the ice cream and alter the analysis according to the worries. But I believe the conclusion will be the same.
We give ice cream to a child. It will be tasty. He will eat it, and he will be happy. So, the sensation created by the object(ice cream) is the cause of happiness for the child.
Intangible Source
Let us consider another case. We will be happy when somebody shows love💕 for us. So the sensation created by an abstract object is the source of happiness.
So, the source of happiness is the objects (both tangible and intangible).
But we found the sources of happiness. But what is happiness? It is nothing but a state of mind that we go to when we experience the sensation. By the same way of thought, we can realize that every emotion we experience has the source as sensation, and they are a state of mind.
Objective happiness – temporary and changing
But what if we give two more ice creams to the same child. Will he be happy after eating the two ice creams? If he is happy after that, then give him ten more. After a certain point, he will start to hate it. So, the object that gave him happiness is now giving him sadness. If we think more about it, every object does the same. The happiness we get from objects is temporary and changing. We grow bored of any object.
Though we get bored of a single object. After we get bored of the object, we go to other objects for happiness, but we will get bored of it too, and we will be restless and unhappy and chasing behind objects (both tangible and intangible) for happiness.
You may also like this example, In a famous Tamil movie “Arunachalam“, in a scene, the hero’s father wants his son to stop smoking. So he made him smoke for 24 hours. He grew tired of it and quit smoking. Now, the hero uses the same trick on his son. The hero wants his son to spend 30 crores in 30 days to inherit the wealth from him.
The insatiable hunger
The reality of objective happiness is it is like an insatiable hunger. We can never get full. We will always want more. We think if we pour water into a vase, it will eventually get full. It will never become full because it has a black hole at the bottom of it (or a bottomless vase). This is true for bad things like drugs, alcohol. It is also true for good things like kindness, knowledge and education.
So, what is my final idea? Happiness is a state of mind. But is happiness a devil that keeps us chasing a rupee note and never make it reach us? Yes and No. Happiness can be a bliss, when we understand the idea of absolute happiness, that is different from the idea of objective happiness. In my next blog, I will explain, “How we can be happy?” and the idea of “Absolute Happiness”. You must read the blog to understand my whole argument. Would you please not stop here? It will not make much sense.
Conclusion
Happiness is a state of mind. Objective happiness is produced from sensations from tangible and intangible objects. Objective happiness is an insatiable hunger, and going behind objective happiness will only make you an insatiable maniac. It is temporary and changing. This is true for alcohol and drugs, and it is also true for empathy, intelligence and kindness.
Link to my next blog: Happiness is within you
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Link to my next blog: Happiness is within you