Happiness?

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More and more I see it all the time, from some of my best NT friends who thought they had it all or were straight on the upshot to everyone who I never really knew back in school just by social structure and now I'm getting to know as an adult and see the broader picture.

It really seems like everyone - aspies, NT's just as much, have to battle like hell to find meaning in life, any remote trace of stable happiness, when I mention my friends I'm talking about a group of guys who have come a long way in their lives, have built some amazing skill sets, and half the time I end up either hearing about half-fast suicide attempts or other friends talking about having a bunch of pills to their mouth, ready to take it down, and something stopping them. Some of these guys are going great places careerwise but feel powerless right now, another has something like a fiance and two kids but isn't happy with the current scenario for a lot of reasons that I can empathize with. Its not just guys either - I know enough women who are the same way dealing with the same things and its strange that its not just a few, its almost anyone I come in contact with who has to struggle this much for meaning or reasons to go on.

It really makes me wonder what it takes? Every time I talk to someone, a friend, acquaintance, or otherwise my heart really goes out to them and I really wish I could offer something that could help bring them around. Myself, I'm nothing close to a stranger to this battle, if anything I've been lucky that I faced it maybe 4 or 5 times harder at a younger age to where feeling the way they do now seems almost like a relief. Now, I've read books on happiness by some of the brightest minds I can think of, it seems like they all concur that lowering expectations for life and adjusting to what is happens to be the key. Whether its the Dalai Lama in 'The Art of Happiness' or Dennis Prager 'Happiness Is A Serious Problem', there's something more to this and something more concrete - I can just sense it. Some could argue that its God, I wouldn't deny that possibility but I can't get my head around what our distance from God really means or what our best mechanism is for shoring up our own senses of life, senses of ourselves and our own emotions, and really getting ourselves to reach a lasting happiness (God, if existent, seems to manifest in ways which seem like their wrapped in much of a deist sort of guise and where we're left holding the puzzle pieces of our lives to figure out ourselves with the assumption that he gave us certain pieces to work with for a reason).

What I do know for certain - accepting one's own incorrigible faults and learning to be happy with life *with* those accounted for seems like its the baseline. The tricky thing is, if your fundamentally catching flack from your life or have the sense that you have to continue to try and manage to take life into your own control, that thought even can be so elastic that you can easily spend years and years trying to jockey around what you know to be your own genetic barriers, thinking you can outsmart them or just snake your way around them the long way; I'm no stranger to that either. Its seems like also though, a person's happiness has to allow for the world exactly as it is and whether an atheist, deist, or theist, that take has to allow for a theodicy that helps them not to be bitter either for what they go through, for what loved ones go through, something sophisticated enough to where they can fill in the seeming chasm in their own hearts, quite often from realistic lack of providence, and do so in such a resilient way that blood, fire, brimstone, mass hysteria, nothing can take that from them or really jar them of it. Above all that is the battle for meaning. It seems like any custom tailored answer that anyone comes up with has to allow for all things external and even internal that are beyond their control.

So - this is my question, do you guys want to have a bit of a philosophical shot at happiness, in terms of what you think works? Do you think that it can be broken down to a science? If so what do you think are the best formulas for the ingredients that most of us already know? I know we have some great minds in here, I think we could come up with some great answers.

I am frankly puzzled about all this eagerness to be "happy". If I'm not hurting and getting enough to eat and sleep reasonably well and have the facilities to examine the world life seems fine. I don't get laid anymore at the age of 83 and frankly I don't really miss it all that much. I don't need happiness and don't need God to blame for being constipated or missing a bus. I frankly don't worry about happiness. It's irrelevant.

When will people learn? The Hindus actually are quite right: Personal pleasures, power, money, fame... these are empty. No, you see, qualifying happiness will make it so that you are never happy. There's always something more that you need for happiness, until one day you realize: Those things never really made you happy.

Sand's got the right of it. Don't worry about happiness and it will come to you. Forcing the issue makes it unattainable.

I agree with what you've said about happiness. I am not sure a set formula can be created, nor can I necessarily state that I think that everyone actually wants happiness, and because of that a science of happiness seems silly to me. Particularly given that people are likely to feel uncomfortable in seeking a scientific formula.

I don't know if it needs anything that constricted; just that I think we can discuss flexible methodologies that seem to work in the broader construct.

I just mean that people don't like regarding themselves as machines generally. I would think it would be more likely to lead to existential issues or something.

I'm not sure we're having the same conversation, mainly I think our definitions are completely different. When I talk about happiness I'm talking about a consciously learned skill set, something more firm like accrued wisdom and coping mechanisms rather than a passing emotion like joy, glee, or 'having fun'. In our generation I see again where people are struggling to find any good reason to go on, I think its getting to be a big enough problem where - even as we can be sure that societal changes currently taking place are moving full steam ahead, the new culture has a lot of new hardships and very few answers. When people do mistake 'joy','glee', or 'having fun' with happiness its already a destructive state because people are chasing emotional stimulus rather than actually looking inward and thinking about what they need to do in order to better situate themselves, their way of handling the world around them, their way of handling the red tape of life and quite possibly may or may never be under their control, etc., etc.. Maybe I'm too optimistic but I think we have much better potential as human beings than to resign ourselves to having our internal ebb and flow that controlled by external emotional stimulus - especially when it has very tangible effects on people's lives when they don't know how to regulate it.

Maybe. Brain scans show that the bliss of everyday consciousness (as opposed to temporary, reactive happiness) is related to overall moderate, stable, and synchronized brainwaves. Many people who struggle too hard for happiness end up doing the opposite to their brains - they become stressed out, frazzled, anxious, depressed. The urban environment and much television, radio, and music push us in the opposite direction - stimulating and possibly good in small doses, toxic in larger doses. The same with desires - ok to want some things, but bad when that takes over. Skillsets recognized by the economy or peers are good, but not enough.

Balance is important. Meditation is good. Exercise is good. Taking some time to work the love and compassion circuits in the brain is also good - they can be strengthened by training, and they ward off other negative emotions. Start with the realization that you won't always be ecstatically happy, but you can also dismiss much of the chattering mind that leads to unhappiness.

And like a few people have said, Vedanta (the unifying theme of Hinduism and Buddhism) does have several philosophical/psychological methods for escaping the day-to-day that seems so real, but is ultimately not 100% satisfying.

This is what I'm saying: People think that, because these things grant them joy and what have you at the lower levels, they think that, somehow, they will obtain happiness through this. Either that or they see others that are supposedly happy or they have the idea from other external sources. They pursue these things; they force the issue. But happiness doesn't work on force. It works on its own, infusing our lives. But as soon as we try to gather more, it leaves us. Happiness doesn't work on a spectrum, it's just there. You either have it or you don't. Those who don't force it, have it. Those who do, don't.

I wonder if people who don't search for meaning in life are more happy than those who do. I think to be happy in this world a person should obtain pleasure and avoid painful situations. Material consumption in all forms brings immediate gratification. Of course, none of this will last. We all know we will eventually lose everything but that is a painful fact so it's easier to not think so much and just go with the flow.

I don't find happiness in much because I know it's all fleeting. To stay in a state of happiness when you know that the natural cycle of life is going to remove it eventually is deluding yourself. Grasping that sort of happiness is the type of behavior that drug users engage in, always looking for a fix.
If there is no meaning behind the cause that brings you happiness, then it is empty unless you are the type who doesn't search for meaning. It is probably an easier way to live, to not think so much.

Now, I have felt ecstasy during prayer and meditation. I compare worldly/outer happiness to that and my spiritual experiences with ecstasy blows it away. It all depends on what you are comparing happiness to and how you measure it. If all you search for is food and shelter, when you find it, you'll be happy. But, if you are searching for the meaning to life then you got a lot further to go. It's easier to live in pursuit of food, sex, water, and shelter but I personally don't find any of that very meaningful or fulfilling for the same reason I don't find a hippo's life very meaningful. Although, people who do live for that are probably more happy than I am, I still wouldn't want to have their ignorant bliss.

Are we omitting then integrity, character, thought, choices of action and reaction, and management of psychological outlook? I'm really talking about disengaging it from the 'simple pleasures' and bringing it from within.

Although it's impossible to know for certain it seems to me that one outstanding difference between humans and other animals is their predisposition to discover multitudes of patterns in the universe. As an artist I work continually with taking the same random visual display and discovering an almost infinite different number of patterns from a single display. Multiple humans can be taught to recognize the same pattern in the events of life and label it "reality" but different groups from different cultures pick out different characteristics from the same general offering and command that their particular pattern is the "real" meaning of life.

Out of these different consolidations come particular religions, political systems, ethical systems, etc. and many blind sided humans are so convinced that their particular viewpoint is the only "real" one that they will force, torture and kill to obliterate any interpretation of the incoming data but their own. The concept of "The meaning of life" is so amorphous and vague that it is basically idiotic to merely nail one down as the only one. Life is a phenomenon and it moves in multitudes of directions at the same time and is not at all separate from what is considered "non life". The closer scientists come to elucidating the various components of forces and materials that comprise the incredibly complicated phenomenon of life the more it becomes obvious that living and non living matter are part of a spectrum of phenomena and to try to fix one objective to its functioning is total foolishness. It is very important to be able to mentally encompass the concept that to try to limit the conceptual interpretations possible for this protean activity is to lose the capability to be flexible enough to understand much of what is going on.

I'll have to second this. Happiness seems to be yet another compartment in the big web we call life, and to go out of one's way to find it doesn't seem to make much sense.

When people's wherewithall to live or want to live is worned down as thin as it is - again - that part leaves something to be desired.

I'd have to figure at this point that the definition of happiness that I'm putting forward is inoperative here. Oh well, thought the topic was worth bringing up.

Well, the word happiness is like the word love - it has different meanings. But I think I get one distinction you are making - what I call 'reactive happiness' which occurs in response to something ... I won a prize, and it (temporarily) made me happy. Things went well today, so I am happy (temporarily). My team won the game, so I am (temporarily) in good spirits. Reactive happiness is not bad, but it is often beyond our control, and it is not deep or ultimately satisfying.

A complement of reactive happiness in basal happiness - the normal emotional state when not really focusing on external circumstances. Reducing desires, meditating and praying, having thankfulness and compassion rituals, exercising in moderation ... these all can improve basal happiness or contentment. In some cases, this can develop to bliss-like levels.

All I know about happiness is that it's a choice you make. For me, the secret is to learn to find contentment with nothing. If you feel you need something to be complete, you will likely never be happy.

I've sought "purpose" for my life. I've never seemed to find it. It used to make me miserable. I'm beginning to accept that maybe my life has no real "purpose," or at least not a grand one like I used to imagine when I was younger.

I've been down the dark path of suicide enough to know that what most inclines a person to go through with it isn't so much being unhappy as it's a loss of hope. I spent many years being miserable. I thought of ending my life many times, but I always held out hope that things would get better. The closest I ever came to following through with my wishes to end my life happened when I hurt so badly that I gave up hoping that things could ever get better.