Is it an ephemeral emotion or a stable and a relatively durable one?
Can a person get sad, cry, and still be happy?
I've doing my research on it for sometime. Here is a link of my presentation on Happiness
http://www.slideshare.net/ShriramSivaramakrishnan/happiness-9660915
But, first share your views on it.
Replies
Well, Kay, there is an underlying truth in your above experience. That we never forget happy moments, we only fail to retrieve them often. Perhaps, happiness, realized in and around, here and there, tends to get overwritten by...well happiness again!
And we call these experiences 'Nostalgia'. Perhaps, it only refers to 'happiness relived'. But retrieving these requires us to have something that can retrieve it. Like a song, or a place, or a food,...
Sad! we require an external object to retrieve OUR happiness, stored in OUR memory! such is life...
Happiness is something that happens in moments that I simultaneously know my destiny and fulfill it by living/expressing destiny in that very micro-second of knowing ... and part of the process of fulfilling destiny is in doing the work of consciously accepting (and welcoming) my fate. So I guess I could say that accepting fate precedes any felt experience of happiness.
I think that happiness for me is a state of mind that is similar, if not the same, as self-satisfaction -- because it takes conscious hard work to get to happiness! For example, after I spend an hour weeding , I can then step back and enjoy the view of a healthy garden and feel good about the work that I did of tending to something that feeds me. There are brief moments when I stop and experience happiness and say to Soul , with a smile, "look at our co-creation. thank you." The other moments are spent running and hiding from fate! ;) Those are not-so-happy moments of being immersed in complexes -- being lost in identifying with transcendent things.
Your comment that happiness takes work is food for thought. Typically I think happiness comes and goes with luck. I do tend to think that a sense of self-satisfaction, self-esteem, and self-efficacy were helpful in the process. I guess happiness is all in the perspective of the individual mind. If I have a headache for a few days in a row, but on one of those days it isn't as bad as on other days. I may be happy about the pain.
Great point made Michelle. One thing that you had put forth (maybe unknowingly) is the role of our thought process in happiness. It is, by no means, just an emotional outflow, though it is an emotion! In your case (that of headache), you maybe happy about not having pain, or do a reverse engineering sort of, and work back from the state of pain to understand that you have no pain and hence say you are happy. This, as you've rightly pointed above, involves considerable cognitive energy, that of thought process...this makes me strongly believe in my earlier understanding that 'Happiness is again a state of mind'....thank you Michelle...
Hi Shriram,
In consideration of happiness being a state of mind, I am unsure how it could be anything but that. There may be things in life we feel happy about, but that is still about our state of mind in relationship to those things. But of course I am so into the observational wave collapse theory that I can't think of anything not being a state of mind, right down to the euphoria hormones in our bodies.
Great point Chris. You've made my day. It you could take time to read my presentation on Happiness (link at the start of this thread), of which this whole discussion is based, you would agree that my perception is similar to yours. Happiness is a STATE OF MIND and relishing those micro moments is the essence of it....well said!
I find that happiness in an emotion that causes the emission of positive neurotransmitters and hormones. How long this remains and how long a person experiences it, depends on the strength and of the stimulation. I believe a person who already has this positivity is more capable of perceiving their environment from this perspective and identify opportunities to recreate it.
Cheers,
Michelle
One small thing Michelle. Can this person (with an overflowing positive hormones) sustain his state of happiness, or least, prolong it far enough to perceive, and, identify opportunities? I think one needs to learn this art, I daresay. But your point has brought in a new angle to the whole discussion. It is time we accept the broader footprint of happiness. More than being a mere emotional state, or an outcome; it has a biological aspect to it. Well made, sir.
Shri
Hi Shriram,
Thanks for liking my point. I am currently studying for my BS in Psychology and of course they cover the biological connection. This is fresh in my mind. But I definitely see that environmental and cognitive factors play a part in the attainment and sustainability of happiness. I believe practice is important. Another biological concept would mean that you can train your neuro-pathways so that they work on your behalf rather than against you.
Good for you Michelle, that you're graduating in psychology. As for me, I'm a software professional, doing research on this (out of my interest).
What you said is true. One can train oneself. But won't training create a sort of veil, that which make us believe is a state of mind (that we call happiness), while deep down, the subject may or mayn't be happy.
If you had notices any psychologists treating depressed patients, one of their therapy (hypnotism) is actually about making the patient UNDERSTAND and ACCEPT that he/she is in a happy state of mind. This becomes a pencil sketch, upon which the artist (the patient) paints happiness (in his canvas called life!)...your thoughts on it...
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