Happiness? A subject as old as the world. Who doesn’t want to be happy? But what is it exactly? Can we be happy?
The dictionary defines happiness as being a state of full satisfaction. But who is plainly satisfied by his health, his business, his children, his boss, the government, his neighbours, his car, his newspaper, his mother-in-law and God?
And of course by all of them together!
Would happiness be a negative idea? Would it result from the absence of pains like war, unemployment, or on a personal level, the absence of sufferance coming from illnesses, dependancy (to drugs, to sex, to work..), caused by an annoying or absent mate or the cell phone…This happiness by default could already be Paradise on Earth for most of us. But that’s not counting the pains we inflict to ourselves: erroneous choices, uncontroled behavior, not mastered vices. How many cause their own unhappiness! Someone said: happiness isn’t about not having a passion but about mastering it.
Can we learn it? How different the world would be if we could dominate our passions. This one kills out of jealousy, that one throws his country into war, that one gets broke playing games, this one risks his career for oral sex. Thus, is happiness an illusion, a movie in our head? It’s not the refusal of our passions but their dominance that matters.
Then there are those who find happiness in effort, in adventures, in the risk. Mothers are also happy to have raised 4, 5 or 6 children.
There is happiness in pleasure as the skin isn’t necessarily sad., but there is also happiness in sacrifice, in giving one’s life for a cause or for God or in the dayly duties acomplishments.
Well, it’s seems some people are not meant for happiness. Nothing conforts them, they always believe being victims of something. Romantism was a two side mirror: one shiny full of hope of those who see everything from above (Chateaubriand) and the dark side, desperate, of those who see everything from deep hell (Byron).
In everyday’s life, there are those who see the shiny side of things and those who see their dark side.
To make an obligation out of the pursuit of happiness is the worst thing: it was Robespierre’s , Lenin, Pol Pot’s dream. We saw what happened when one wants to make people happy in spite of them.
Maybe happiness doesn’t exist, maybe only moments of happiness exist. We could assume happiness isn’t a goal per se.
The idea of a total , irradiating happinesss will haunt men forever. Just like those ships, immobilized at port, and balancing through the waves and that ask us: When will we leave for Happiness? (translation is mine, but the original is more extensive)

Raoul