Happiness

Before anything else, I just want to state that this is my view on happiness. As almost everyone already knows, happiness is hard to define. Maybe the reason why it's so hard to define is because it is such an abstract concept. As the philosopher John Locke (thank you AP) said, language exists because humans want to express particular concepts to other people. As time passed, the word "happiness" can be commonly described as a feeling wherein one smiles/laughs/feels free/feels light inside or other things similar to these notions. This has been the notion brought about by our environment (parents, friends, community, media, etc.). But I think, this common notion on the word has already changed from the original and continues to change.

I guess when the first people started to talk, they had a hard time making words that describe what they feel. But they tried and formed words such as happiness. For me, they formed a word which was so vague. It might be the "smiling" for the maker of the word, but "relief and relaxation" for some of the people now.

Nevertheless, I think it can be safe to conclude that based on the common notions society experiences, happiness is an emotion related to a light feeling, usually accompanied by a change of mood, manner of acting, and body language.

Another thing that makes happiness so vague is the cause for this particular feeling. The causes differ from one person to the other, making it so hard to pinpoint what happiness is. If all of us are brought up in a society which embraces physical and emotional conformity and we are exposed to the same stimuli, I guess it would be easy to pinpoint and describe particular emotions. But we weren't brought up in such a society. This makes it hard to describe happiness even more.

According to Sir Ron, language made people a lot lazier. People were able to communicate without having the use of language in the very early stages of mankind. The result of human laziness was the forming of words which trap the broadness of emotions. My definition, was based on what I think happiness is which is based on my experiences.

But I'm glad happiness is vague. This, I think, makes us more unique as individuals.