theartofthetangent

So I was browsing around my computer and found this essay I wrote in college and thought that reworked a bi, it might make a decent blog, so here it is.  Enjoy the first installment of “Old Stuff Rewritten”!

Happiness: that warm, fuzzy feeling in the pit of your stomach…  somehow reminiscent of that time I swallowed a hamster.

 What is happiness?  There is no right or wrong answer here.  Maybe a weird or common answer, but not a wrong or right one.  Like beauty, I believe happiness is very much in the eye of the beholder.  Exercise makes the athlete happy, while it tortures the hell out of the couch potato.  Happiness is never the same for any two people, no matter how much they have in common.  There will always be something in life that brings joy to one individual and not the other.

So what is happiness?  Good question, but I still don’t know.  I decided to go look it up, so I could see what the masters of the language think happiness is.  It was a pointless endeavor, because the dictionary knows what happy means but not happiness.  According to The American Heritage Dictionary, happiness is merely the noun form of happy and needs no further explanation.  This leads me to believe that not even the professionals meant to find meaning in all things know for sure.  I personally don’t find that very reassuring.

What is happiness?  I wish I knew for sure.  Every personality type has a different response to that question, and I feel I am several personality types ruled into one… a multiple personality without the cut from reality.  So does that in turn mean that at different times different things should make me happy?  Well, yes.  Of course, it does.  I do believe, however, that there are certain things that always make me happy. For me, happiness resides always in the wanted challenge and in the love and environment of my friendships.

So, I ask one last time, what is happiness?  This time I think I have it.  Happiness has no meaning.  It is an abstract complex that a brain structure produces to keep from burning itself out.  Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in happiness or that I believe that happiness isn’t worthwhile.  It merely means that no one person will ever be able to pinpoint a universal definition of happiness.  It is left to you, the reader, to determine what happiness is, and I challenge you to go out and find your own meaning.  I know I plan on pursuing my definition, nailing it down, and trying to live it… or maybe I’ll just go swallow another hamster.

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