Who is happy?

GracieRuth

GracieRuth

Permanent Fixture
MBTI
INFJ
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I'd like to recommend one of the latest articals on Happiness by Dennis Prager. Who is Dennis Prager? Along with my parents and the Inklings, Prager has been a major force in forging my adult ethics and morality. He is a radio talk show host who is less concerned with getting his opponants to agree with him as with everyone being able to articulate their positions clearly. To sum up this article, Prager says the following people tend to be happy (you'll have to click on the link to read the full article):

  • People who control themselves.
  • People who are given little and earn what they have.
  • People who do not see themselves or their group as victims.
  • People who rarely complain.
  • People who have close friends.
  • People who are in a good marriage.
  • People who act happy.
  • People who aren't envious.
  • People who don't have high self-esteem.
  • People who have few expectations.
  • People who are grateful.
 
I don't see a link.
I haven't heard Dennis on the radio in quite some time. I did enjoy him when I did listen.
 
I would say I am happier than not. I relate to most of the things on the list. If I had only two choices on the marriage thing, good or not so good, I would say good. Now of course there are days it is less good, than others, and there are days that are more than good. I am not envious, but I have my brief moments where I consider being envious, than I always decide against it. I do have expectations, maybe not high expectations, I try to keep my expectations within reason.

I know I wouldn't give up the good things in my life, for all the money in the world. If I could keep the things I have, that are priceless, and get the money, I don't know what I would do. I would be afraid that even though those incredible things in my life were still there, they would be different in some way. Or I would be different in some way, and I would lose sight of how incredible, those incredible (people) things truly are. Maybe that is why when I buy lottery tickets, I will not check them for weeks. A few times I never checked ones I bought. I have one in my wallet from 2 1/2 weeks ago, I still need to check.
 
Virgil is happy. He escaped to the great outdoors today.
Naughty kitty.


I find this list of happy things quite humourous. People with
anorexia control themselves quite well and they are deeply
unhappy, but then they only have very few of those criteria, generally.
Do you suppose the happiest man in the world has all of these
things?
 
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This made me think of that children's song, "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands".

Monks clapping.webp
 
I have learned all you have can be trashed in but a moment, making it difficult to climb back to your happy attitude. After being hammered over and over again, it makes one wonder why someone would do this to another unless it is intentional with selfish reasons.

Therefore, I have learned the mask of happiness through bad times to be one worn with great pride of mastering oneself. I have also learned it impossible to "make" someone else happy when they do not want to appear to be so.

I have wondered if it is alright to have a somewhat asymmetrical happiness about me.
 
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GracieRuth said:
  • People who have close friends.
  • People who act happy.
  • People who aren't envious.
  • People who don't have high self-esteem.
  • People who have few expectations.
  • People who are grateful.
Click to expand...
Hmm. I think my close friends and low self-esteem are canceled out by envy. Acting happy, grateful, few expectations... sometimes.
I've also been happier after some episodes of sorrow. I wonder if that has to do with lowering one's expectations in the process.
 
just me said:
I have also learned it impossible to "make" someone else happy when they do not want to appear to be so.
Click to expand...
It's hard to know if someone is really happy, even if they appear to be. "Having few expectations" creates a sort of unrushed peace that seems to make me happier than in many situations.
 
It's more about degrees of satisfaction.
 
Depression has always been my Nemesis, my Old Enemy. I have had to learn to choose to be happy. Even with all the happiness skills I've learned, there are still those times when my biology sends me to a place I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It was only a month ago that I was so crippled by a bipolar depression that I spent a week in the hospital, talking to myself as I paced the floor. I'm talking about the scary place I go when the crying STOPS. But something odd happened. I bounced. I have no idea if it is the cumulative effects of the good lifestyle choices I've put into effect, ie the good diet, going to bed at sunset, etc., or if it's the new meds, but I'm happy. And I don't mean the "choose to be" kind of happiness that I've learned to cultivate. I mean an easy biological happiness. I actually can think about the future and say to myself, in ten years I'd like to do this or that, instead of trying to avoid thoughts like I hope I'm not around in ten years. It's an almost irrational happiness, and it's been so long since I've felt this way that I had almost forgotten what it feels like.

I'd like to raise a toast: to good friends, to goats that follow you around and cats that shnoogle your legs, to having enough food to eat and even enough to enjoy it, to wine and song and sex (even if its only dreaming about it!), to Passover and Easter and Springtime, to never being a prisoner even behind locked doors, to living on $900/mo and knowing you are wealthy, to the sunshine and the sound of birds singing, and to children everywhere!
 
If one is in a good marriage, but where things go to heck whenever the shoe drops, depression can set in. Being hurt is easy to overcome and be happy again. Being hurt many times, some with extremely bad timing, has a limit to it where one seems to stop living the way one used to. I am reminded of Deathjam's old avatar when he is sitting in front of the computer and goes nuts. First time his head gets bashed(one gets hurt badly) seems alright, but after he hits his head over and over again it starts to bleed. I remember he eventually stops. This is the stopping I am referring to.

Reminds me of a scripture verse: Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love; I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Guess I'm saying a person can have all those things except where they do not feel loved like they need to be loved (or feel like they themselves love) and it can be a difficult ride down the road for them.

Happiness? Looking around me I think each person may have their own qualifications of being happy, but the list seems like a good list.
 
Elis said:
People who act happy.

what?
Click to expand...

+1

And, "People who don't have high self-esteem"??? That totally confuzzles me as I see self-esteem as belief in one's own potential, whereas I'm guessing they're equating it to arrogance.
 
Elis said:
People who act happy.

what?
Click to expand...
This comes from a mainstay of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Psychological Research has shown that if you change behavior, attitude follows. If you act as though you are happy, you will actually become happier.
 
Black Sheep said:
+1

And, "People who don't have high self-esteem"??? That totally confuzzles me as I see self-esteem as belief in one's own potential, whereas I'm guessing they're equating it to arrogance.
Click to expand...
I thought this was a wierd one too. But it has to do with how Dennis defines self esteem as being high self regard even if you haven't earned it. He seems to use "high self esteem" the way I would use "arrogance." This is what he said in the article:
Low self-esteem doesn't contribute to happiness, and some self-esteem can add to one's happiness. But high self-esteem contributes to unhappiness. People with high self-esteem rarely have close friends. First, almost no one is good enough for them. Second, such people are usually insufferable, and while they attract sycophants, they repel friends. Self-respect, not self-esteem, should be the goal.
Click to expand...
 
GracieRuth said:
This comes from a mainstay of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Psychological Research has shown that if you change behavior, attitude follows. If you act as though you are happy, you will actually become happier.
Click to expand...

relatively happier isn't necessarily happy, is it?
 
People on heroin report being very happy. Just sayin'

Seriously, the problem with happiness is that it isn't a particular emotion- it is more of a meta-emotion. You don't feel 'happy' so much as you feel adequate or high pleasure and the relative absence of pain and suffering, and then you reflect on it and decide that your current emotion state of affairs constitutes happiness. You can never really pin down what 'happiness' is precisely because it is a meta-emotion- it is dependent upon the structures through which individuals assess themselves and their life quality. So you have people who become 'unhappy' when they have to wait an extra 20 minutes at the bank, and then you have people who are happy to have been lucky enough to eat dinner that night. It is largely a matter of perspective and intertwined with one's attitude toward pleasure and pain. If you love pleasure and hate pain and are unwilling to tolerate any suffering whatsoever no matter how unavoidable or necessary it is, you will always be unhappy because you'll always be dissatisfied with your circumstances.

So I would say that happiness is not having to worry about whether or not you are living up to an idea of 'happy' and taking the pleasures and enduring the pains that life throws at you as best you can. I feel like most discussions on happiness, many of the books written on it that make a list of things you should and should not do, are often counterproductive. They aren't always counterproductive, but for some people in some circumstances they can be.
 
People "on" high self-esteem generally have the ability to react negatively easier than those with low self-esteem when things go wrong for them.

On a different note, "Keep your head up high, but your nose at a friendly level".


Tell someone on the low side to go stick their head in the sand and their reply might be, "did that yesterday" or
"already there". Tell someone on the higher end.


Blessed are the meek. Blessed are the poor in spirit. Sorrow is better than laughter; for by the sadness of the countenance, the heart is made stronger.


I get this peaceful, easy feeling and I know you won't let me down
Cause I'm already standing on the ground.

People who control themselves plays a part of it all.

Edit: this is me trying not to be so serious.
 
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