As a follow-up to our discussion on humor I thought we might try and discuss happiness. I've dipped into this pool of thought before with mixed results, but every time is different, isn't it?
Rather than spending a lot of time writing about happiness, research on happiness, types and degrees of happy, and so forth, I recommend that you go onto YouTube and search on happiness and watch a few of the presentations there. People study human happiness in a variety of ways. Subjects take tests and surveys, researchers think up tricky tests that challenge a common sense sort of happiness ideal, and the results are not necessarily what you would expect.
As with beauty being in the eye of the beholder, happiness seems to have a similar sort of personally identified kind of relationship we each create for ourselves. There is an axiom that we all create our own happiness, and some of the research presented in the talks seems to bear this out.
If you decide to log in and participate on Friday, March 26, that would make me happy.
Addenda:
I looked up Happiness on Ted Talks (not the plus one, by the way), and found a pod cast that included a talk given by Barry Schwartz where he talks about the relationship between having lots of choices in life and happiness. He concludes that having a little bit of choice increases happiness, but having a lot of choices decreases it. He uses the salad dressing shelves at the grocery store as an example. He reports that there are 175 different salad dressings there, and the process of selecting just one to take home with you can cause paralysis. Selecting just one leads to regret that the one you bought was not actually the one you wanted. You end up disappointed rather than happier, due to the many choices. To listen takes 12 minutes, and it is worth your time.
Here is another link. I posted on the topic of Happiness Sauce in October, 2012. Click on this link to find a coherent and helpful discussion, at least in my opinion.