Introductory Chapter of the book: A Little Essay on Mental Wellness
How to Be - and Stay - Happy - 2
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... A few definitions of happiness

In all periods of history, in all languages, human beings have continuously described a state which seems to be an ideal: happiness! Of course, the notion of happiness has not always been described with the same precision, and several terms were used to refer to it. Sometimes related to love, other times to religious bliss, happiness tempted philosophers in their writings and took many faces, from art work and wealth to artificial paradises. Religions and other rituals have also tended towards this harmony. These austere ways of living were an efficient mean to meet essential psychological and emotional needs, like self-esteem and social recognition. Those mystic experiences gave meaning to life; the beneficial feeling to be useful in the world. However, as progressed scientific research, we now found new explanations and new ways to fulfil those needs.

In a more or less concrete way, the human search for meaning became a quest for happiness, for an intense, constant and irreducible joy. But this attempt remains unrealizable insofar as the notion of happiness simply does not describe reality! Did popular wisdom not notice that no one, from the richest to the more accomplished person, has ever reached such a state of durable joy? Did we never notice that happiness arise in and through a collection of moments of varying nature that are usually short, which agreeably punctuate our lives in a sporadic and unforeseeable way? For instance, such happiness seems to appear in different circumstances, as in love, when we succeed in a project which required much effort, or during the pleasure and relaxation travelling brings. Still, those states are happy because they are not permanent. The happiness I present in this book is not the one we usually imagine, simply because such a state of euphoria or constant satisfaction does not really exist. And to determine such an agreeable state is even more complicated: the way we define happiness varies from one person to the other!

Therefore, to win the first prize on the lottery can transform moments which previously remained too rare, even exceptional, into usual habits. To have the possibility, when you wish, to drink high-class wines or to travel around the world does not lead you to a permanent state of happiness. You will feel an intense pleasure only at the beginning. We always get accustomed to new states, as pleasant as they are! For this reason, these intense moments of satisfaction are only possible for short periods. It is interesting to note that, in the chemistry of the brain, these moments of exaltation rise through the work of particular molecules – neurotransmitters such as endorphin, dopamine and serotonin. Without these substances, we would feel no euphoria at all. However, as it happens with drugs, our body cannot constantly maintain this exceptional state and the effect of these natural substances remains restricted.

Thus, the limit of this definition of “happiness” is simply a physiological one. We quickly forget that it is the scarcity of these happy moments which makes their intensity! A constant happiness would rapidly desensitize our body to that state of natural euphoria. This is exactly what the poet Aragon meant when he wrote that no happy love exists. It is only the circumstantial dimension of love which makes passion rise, increasing the force and beauty of this ineffable feeling.

To everyone, happiness seems to constitute the main goal, but we defined it as a state of euphoria and constant satisfaction. In a more effective way, is it possible to find a more realistic definition of happiness, as a general way to improve our life? And, if this definition exists, how do we have to proceed to reach this state of well-being?

As far as we extend our look on the human history, we notice a systematic search for happiness. Already three centuries ago, Epicure, a Greek philosopher, wrote in The Letter to Ménécée: “It is necessary to study the means of acquiring happiness, since when we live happy, we have everything, and when we do not have it, we do all we can to acquire it”. In ancient philosophy or nowadays, we seek to improve our lives. But the new means I propose in this book to reach happiness, through the understanding of our psychological processes, are quite different from all of the means Epicure had in his time. …

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