What could be better than a happy life? Even though everyone has a different idea of what a happy life is, this is pretty much everyone’s dream. But what is the secret recipe? What do you have to do to be happy?
First of all, what is happiness? The Oxford dictionary says it is simply the state of feeling or showing pleasure. There is nothing too unexpected here, everything is very straightforward. You have to feel good to be happy.
The art of feeling good. There are different ways of achieving this feeling, as well as different intensities and durations of it. You can feel happy after drinking a cup of cold water on a hot summer’s day, but it is not something to be happy about for too long. You might think that earning a million dollars or living in a luxurious mansion is the height of happiness. Well, these things may make you happy for a long time, but eventually you will get used to them. As a result, you will stop feeling happy even though you have a lot of money and luxury.
But there is a way out of this endless cycle of getting something nice, feeling happy, getting used to it, and then moving on to get something else to make you happy again. You have to learn to feel happy with as little as possible. And also to maintain that feeling of happiness. If you have a home, you are not in constant pain, you have basic food, some friends, some people who care about you, you are already a happy person. You have enough to be happy. Everything else is luxury. This is a simplified idea of Epicurus and I like this concept very much (see “Necessary and natural things, natural but not necessary things and unnatural and unnecessary things in Epicurean philosophy” for more information). However, I don’t agree with Epicurus in some cases, I think that politics and luxury, although unnecessary and unnatural as he says, are quite fun. You just have to remember what they are and that your happiness can’t depend on them. But these are less important details. The main idea is that
happiness is more of a habit than an achievement.
The only way to achieve happiness is to get used to it. To be able to feel it with what you already have. That way you won’t become a junkie, always looking for a new “dose” of happiness. Quite the opposite. You will be a healthy, mature person, feeling happy whilst having little and feeling even better, achieving more and more, but never being dependent on the luxuries you get. This is the art of feeling good and being happy.
In short, happiness is simply “the state of feeling pleasure”, and you don’t need much to achieve it. The most important thing is to get into the habit of being happy, even if you only have the bare minimum. And not to get caught up in your achievements, so that your happiness does not depend on them.
