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What brings you happiness in life?

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3K views 31 replies 20 participants last post by  PandaBoo 
#1 ·
What is the key to happiness in life? Is there such a thing as living a fulfilling life without any regrets?
 
#4 ·
To crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and hear the lamentations of their women.

To answer your question, I don't think there's such a thing as a life without regrets. Regret is a natural reaction to living, learning, and realizing what would have been different if you'd possessed such knowledge before. I'd also present the idea that a fulfilling life and a happy life are two different things, and need not be connected.
 
#12 ·
Other people doing these things or you doing these things? ....I'm curious.

I have been contemplating about being judgmental of people lately. I am very judgmental naturally, I think its my eF. I have decided to notice others weaknesses and strengths, but to focus on the good and be aware of the bad.
 
#15 ·
You can't know good without the bad, is there a way that we can be grateful for the bad....even though it fking sucks to deal with? I have regrets sure. I have learned lessons from the bad though. Without pain, I would not know bliss. Without laziness, I would not know what hard work is. Without stress, I would not know what relaxing is. Without failing, I would not know what success feels like. Every single negative has its opposite. Can you know the good without the bad?
 
#8 ·
Sad things happen and I get sad but my outlook is never sad or cynical. I am deeply grounded by the cycle and rhythm of life and if you don't lose sight of that then happiness is never far away. In a word: perspective is my happiness. Live in that place above the moment. Be infinite.
 
#10 ·
Living for God will give you no regrets, but it won't necessarily make you happy all the time (no one said it was easy) (depending on your perspective on what you undergo).
Drugs will only make you happy depending on a) the kind of drug, b) how much money you have, c) if you get caught using an illegal drug, etc. etc. etc.
Relationships will give you a thrill, but it will last up until either a) your introverted side kicks in and you get tired of the person or b) the other person starts irritating you, etc. etc.

But I guess the question should be, What exactly are you asking for?
 
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#22 · (Edited)
I don't search for happiness.
Happiness is too much, it is temporary and it is hard to achieve.

Serenity is my goal.

So I would say:
economic indipendence without too many responsabilities or too much time spent
few people I really love and who really love me
laughs (I like to laugh)
time for myself
stuff I like and that entretain me (my interests and my comforts)
living a bit far away from big cities but not too far, in the coutryside, if it's possible
not too many responsabilities in general
being able to travel when I want and to be free to go where I want
possibily becoming wise a day

Then, if some flashes of happiness come in, they are welcome. But I suspect of happiness a bit: it is usually followed by sadness, I don't know why.
 
#24 ·
I don't search for happiness.
Happiness is too much, it is temporary and it is hard to achieve.

Serenity is my goal.

Then, if some flashes of happiness come in, they are welcome. But I suspect of happiness a bit: it is usually followed by sadness, I don't know why.
The perspective of the opposite can bring some negative connotations. Almost making Happiness and Sadness black and white, with no grey areas in between. Like can you have a percentage of happiness, like 50% happy is "kinda happy?" Its almost makes the word Happy seem.... fickle, or temporary like you described. I still feel that there is a lack of a thoughtful conclusion that I don't have fully produced on the topic.

When you broke it down to specifics when approaching serenity, I wanted to go and create the same list for myself. excuse me for stealing your idea. :)

Creating goals and working towards achieving them
Learning new skills, like how to cook a new recipe
A quiet afternoon or night reading a book
A smile and a hug from the girl I am dating
A beautiful view of a valley or ocean from a high place
A conversation where I gain a affinity to another or a conversation of self discovery
Listening to music as I take a walk

Thank you.
 
#26 ·
I think there is happiness to be lived. The problem, if we're to confine ourselves to MBTI for example, is that we construct systems of definitions about ourselves in which we cannot be happy. Perhaps more of the thinkers ought to give a middle finger to what they must think about to make them happy, and accept living in the moment as happiness.
 
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#28 ·
Perhaps more of the thinkers ought to give a middle finger to what they must think about to make them happy, and accept living in the moment as happiness.
Never! :tongue:

But in all seriousness, I do sometimes choose not to think and just go with whatever happens, because I've found it to be more enjoyable in some situations.
 
#31 ·
My happiness exists when I'm in the pursuit of learning why something is.

Happiness


Happiness is the successful state of life, pain is an agent of death. Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. A morality that dares to tell you to find happiness in the renunciation of your happiness—to value the failure of your values—is an insolent negation of morality. A doctrine that gives you, as an ideal, the role of a sacrificial animal seeking slaughter on the altars of others, is giving you death as your standard. By the grace of reality and the nature of life, man—every man—is an end in himself, he exists for his own sake, and the achievement of his own happiness is his highest moral purpose.

But neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive in any random manner, but will perish unless he lives as his nature requires, so he is free to seek his happiness in any mindless fraud, but the torture of frustration is all he will find, unless he seeks the happiness proper to man. The purpose of morality is to teach you, not to suffer and die, but to enjoy yourself and live.

Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 123
Happiness is not to be achieved at the command of emotional whims. Happiness is not the satisfaction of whatever irrational wishes you might blindly attempt to indulge. Happiness is a state of non-contradictory joy—a joy without penalty or guilt, a joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real, not the joy of a drunkard, but of a producer. Happiness is possible only to a rational man, the man who desires nothing but rational goals, seeks nothing but rational values and finds his joy in nothing but rational actions.

Just as I support my life, neither by robbery nor alms, but by my own effort, so I do not seek to derive my happiness from the injury or the favor of others, but earn it by my own achievement. Just as I do not consider the pleasure of others as the goal of my life, so I do not consider my pleasure as the goal of the lives of others. Just as there are no contradictions in my values and no conflicts among my desires—so there are no victims and no conflicts of interest among rational men, men who do not desire the unearned and do not view one another with a cannibal’s lust, men who neither make sacrifices nor accept them.

Galt’s Speech,
For the New Intellectual, 132
In psychological terms, the issue of man’s survival does not confront his consciousness as an issue of “life or death,” but as an issue of “happiness or suffering.” Happiness is the successful state of life, suffering is the warning signal of failure, of death. Just as the pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is an automatic indicator of his body’s welfare or injury, a barometer of its basic alternative, life or death—so the emotional mechanism of man’s consciousness is geared to perform the same function, as a barometer that registers the same alternative by means of two basic emotions: joy or suffering. Emotions are the automatic results of man’s value judgments integrated by his subconscious; emotions are estimates of that which furthers man’s values or threatens them, that which is for him or against him—lightning calculators giving him the sum of his profit or loss.

But while the standard of value operating the physical pleasure-pain mechanism of man’s body is automatic and innate, determined by the nature of his body—the standard of value operating his emotional mechanism, is not. Since man has no automatic knowledge, he can have no automatic values; since he has no innate ideas, he can have no innate value judgments.

“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 27
Happiness is that state of consciousness which proceeds from the achievement of one’s values. If a man values productive work, his happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his life. But if a man values destruction, like a sadist—or self-torture, like a masochist—or life beyond the grave, like a mystic—or mindless “kicks,” like the driver of a hotrod car—his alleged happiness is the measure of his success in the service of his own destruction. It must be added that the emotional state of all those irrationalists cannot be properly designated as happiness or even as pleasure: it is merely a moment’s relief from their chronic state of terror.

Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences.

“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 28
The maintenance of life and the pursuit of happiness are not two separate issues. To hold one’s own life as one’s ultimate value, and one’s own happiness as one’s highest purpose are two aspects of the same achievement. Existentially, the activity of pursuing rational goals is the activity of maintaining one’s life; psychologically, its result, reward and concomitant is an emotional state of happiness. It is by experiencing happiness that one lives one’s life, in any hour, year or the whole of it. And when one experiences the kind of pure happiness that is an end in itself—the kind that makes one think: “This is worth living for”—what one is greeting and affirming in emotional terms is the metaphysical fact that life is an end in itself.

But the relationship of cause to effect cannot be reversed. It is only by accepting “man’s life” as one’s primary and by pursuing the rational values it requires that one can achieve happiness—not by taking “happiness” as some undefined, irreducible primary and then attempting to live by its guidance. If you achieve that which is the good by a rational standard of value, it will necessarily make you happy; but that which makes you happy, by some undefined emotional standard, is not necessarily the good. To take “whatever makes one happy” as a guide to action means: to be guided by nothing but one’s emotional whims. Emotions are not tools of cognition; to be guided by whims—by desires whose source, nature and meaning one does not know—is to turn oneself into a blind robot, operated by unknowable demons (by one’s stale evasions), a robot knocking its stagnant brains out against the walls of reality which it refuses to see.

“The Objectivist Ethics,”
The Virtue of Selfishness, 29
 
#32 ·
Happiness is short lived. For me, I try to find something that is more meaningful - like a passion. It should be something that you get lost in time with without even realizing that it's gone. Time distortion is key.
 
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