Happiness is a moving target.

Sharing Anthony's article with you:

"Happiness is a moving target.

It is one of those things, like the meaning of life, once you make a definition, you can always find fault with it.


A truly happy person has no need of happiness, that’s the irony, because he/she is busy doing what he enjoys and finds meaningful.

Academics can only lay out the socio-political conditions necessary for the pursuit of happiness in a civil society for the majority of the people. For the minority, such as artists, poets and spiritually more developed people, the rule doesn’t always apply.

Jesus said, ‘Turn the other cheek.” For most people who are used to an eye for an eye, this will be the pinnacle of pain and humiliation. A truly loving Christian will derive much satisfaction from it.

For the three conditions that Seligman mentioned, every one of them could become a source of pain if they are held too tightly and without wisdom. Lao-tzu said,

‘The five colors blind the eye…..The five flavours destroy the palate.’ Too much sensual stimulations are not always good. It could lead to increased tolerance and addictions. The same can be said about relationships. Many men kill their ex-spouse because they could not walk away from their relationship.

So when we say certain conditions are necessary for the pursuit of happiness, we have to ask, ‘for whom, and when?’ The Buddhists list ten levels of Bodhisattva attainment and they all have different level of enjoyment. So happiness has something to do with your level of spiritual attainment as well.

Without getting into a Socratic dialectic about happiness, the best I can say about happiness is it is an absence of unhappiness because everybody knows in their guts what unhappiness feels like. While moments of happiness are fleeting, unhappiness are more stubborn and quite often overstay their welcome.

Let’s hope that everybody becomes a hotel for unhappiness rather than a home. When they check out, at least you have a break.

Keep smiling.

Anthony"

--