Wondering about Happiness

I write a lot about happiness.

People seem to struggle with this.

The problem is that happiness, as a goal, isn’t a very good one.

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First, no one knows what it means and that means if you are pursuing it, you might not recognize it when you feel it.

Also, most people’s ideas about what might make them happy, are wrong. 

It’s also an incomplete concept.

For me, the state I am in most of the time is stupid happy contented bliss. 

But telling people to follow their bliss sounds rather new agey and not at all humanistic.

True happiness, if we can call it that, is more akin to contentedness. Or thriving.  Or what the greeks and Paul Kurtz called eudemonia (or however you pronounce it – it’s all greek to me). 

So, what’s an aspiring guru who teaches people how to be happy to do?

It’s to make it clear, the way to be happy is to not seek out happiness, but to instead focus on increasing your overall wellbeing.

If you can do that, you will probably be happy.