What is happiness? It's more than just being content. Being content is a more settled, passive
feeling, perhaps like after one has just eaten a large meal.. Life feels good, Life feels right, you
wish things could just remain that way. Happiness is a more active feeling, a vibrant joy that
sings and dances within you. Often what we feel is contentment, not happiness.

Happiness is fleeting. That surge of energy is hard to maintain. We can get happy over the most
trivial things; when a friend greets us, when we get something new.. The happiness soon leaves
though, and what we have left, if we are still feeling positive, is contentment.

The pursuit of happiness is, in fact, futile. It's a losing battle because there is simply nothing to
keep us permanently happy. When the friend goes away, when we tire of the toy, we fall back
to contentment.

What's wrong with just being content? Nothing, essentially, except that for some reason, we
associate it with laziness. That is a mistake in our way of thinking. Should we then associate the
pursuit of happiness with being greedy since it makes necessary the seeking of other things
instead of taking pleasure in what we already have?
 
 
 

Original Site:      www.geocities.com/RainForest/4035/happy.html