Recently, I have begun to question the definition of happiness and what it means for an individual to really be happy. To understand what it means for someone to want to satisfy their soul’s never-ending desires to feel content and to understand how you are able to come across this feeling and practice it on a daily basis. Is it a skill to hone? How are some people able to stumble upon it easier than others? Is there a trick, a code, some specific action to take? Is it an everlasting journey that one must constantly strive for?

Oftentimes, I think a lot of people associate happiness with their measure of success in life. Their success is then often measured by their achievements in their career. Career is then determined or chosen by the status that one could potentially have within society or income.

Take the pre-medical or STEM-related major students, for example. Many of us seem to have often come from a background where we were surrounded by like-minded or high-achieving academic friends throughout our lives or in high school who inspired us to be better and strive for our goals. However, there are times when it can also become a toxic cycle of comparison. Perhaps we even begin to strive for things no longer because we are passionate about them, but instead because of a status or perception others will have of us. 

Do feelings of happiness arise when being perceived by others in a certain prestigious way and if so, do they last for long? At the end of the day, it is we who will be stuck with the work we choose to do and not those we seek validation from.

There are people that seem to extrude positivity in every way that they live and interact with others every day. People who are easy-going about the way they live life and do not happen to ever take things too seriously. They show up with the biggest smiles and kindest of hearts in every setting they present themselves in and laughter is nothing short of a normal phenomenon for them. I often stare in awe at these people and wonder how one can possibly master such a feat of immense love in a world that is not always too kind or where people pass by one another without acknowledgment of the other. 

Not only that, but more times than not, many of these people are some of those who have struggled throughout life in some way at one point or another, and perhaps still currently are, yet they still choose happiness and positivity to be their life’s long motto. They could be those who may not have been raised with much or have struggled to live in certain environments, and yet they do not allow the negativity that they have experienced to affect the way in which they interact with others or present themselves in life. 

Is happiness a choice then or something that comes naturally to some, an inherent feeling some of us are more genetically predisposed to?

Recently, I talked to a bus driver, a woman who had a lot of good wisdom to share about life and her perspective on happiness. 

 She talked about being grateful and showed me how it is often the simple things that bring about happiness in spite of the tough circumstances that life may bring about. She told me of how she never takes anything too seriously or is disappointed about when something is taken away from her because she knows that in many ways life will give it back in different or better ways. All pieces of wisdom that I believe in one way or another have contributed to her level of happiness and positive outlook on life. 

She also happened to inform me about how she views happiness in a way in which there are many different types of happiness, such as work, friendship, romantic, familial, etc. How happiness comes from and perhaps is many things and not just one. This is something that many of us have probably heard of at one point or the other. However, I think that even though many of us may understand the concept of seeing happiness as categorical and even say that we agree with it, we instead often see happiness as one big overall thing when it comes to actionably living it out. Unfortunately, many of us have adapted the mentality of allowing any small problem from one of those different categories of happiness to seep into the happiness of all the other categories, thereby impeding our overall happiness. 

So how can one separate all of the categories of happiness and not allow problems in one area to affect the other areas of life? How can one not allow a small inconvenience that may happen in a day to affect the way that we go about the rest of our day? 

Happiness then, it seems, is not a very clear-cut concept to understand or define. Some people seek it out for their whole lives and never seem to find it. It is most likely to be a complex and nuanced thing that is defined by all of the questions that I have asked and many more I have not. Something that we are all constantly seeking and trying to understand on a more fundamental and deeper human level. Perhaps then, that means that the best way to understand how it can be achieved is through self-introspection and understanding of one’s own individual wants and needs as it can not always mean the same for all, and perhaps that is why it is so hard to define. Perhaps taking the time to understand what our own unique wants and needs are and going on a deeper level to do so, can lead us to the best indicator of how those feelings of contentment and happiness can be found.