HAPPINESS : SOME INTERESTING VIEWS

HAPPINESS : SOME INTERESTING VIEWS

There is no universal definition of happiness. Dictionaries mention it as joy, delight,  bliss, cheerfulness, high spirits , ecstasy, etc. ; and a happy person is  supposed to be contented, pleased, gratified , fortunate, etc.

According to the English divine and Archbishop of Canterbury John Tillotson (1630-94): man courts happiness in a thousand shapes; and the faster he follows it the swifter it flies from him. Almost everything promises happiness to us at a distance, but when we come nearer, either we fall short of it, or it falls short of our expectation; and it is hard to say which of these is the greatest disappointment. Our hopes are usually bigger than the enjoyment can satisfy; and an evil long feared, besides that it may never come, is many   times more painful and troublesome than the evil itself when it comes.

The  American Senator, John J. Ingalls (1833-1900 -1900) expressed the following  views in one of his philosophical writings on this topic:    

Happiness is an endowment and not an acquisition. It depends more upon temperament and disposition than environment  It is a state or condition of mind, and not a commodity  to be bought or sold in the market.

A beggar may be happier in his rags than a king in his purple. Poverty is more compatible with happiness than wealth, and the inquiry, “How to be happy though poor?” implies a want of understanding the conditions upon which happiness depends.

The man who is unhappy when he is poor would be unhappy if he were rich, and he who is happy in a palace would be happy in a dug-out.

There are as many unhappy rich men as there are unhappy poor men.

Every heart knows its own bitterness and its own joy.

Not that wealth and what it brings is not desirable --- books travel, leisure, comfort, the best food and dress , agreeable companionship – but all these do not necessarily bring happiness and may co-exist with deepest distress , while adversity and extreme poverty , exile and suffering are not incompatible with the loftiest advancement  of the soul.

And finally, as the American clergy H.W.Beecher (1813-1887) puts it: Happiness is not the end of life; character is.

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4^th July 2022                                                            G.R.Kanwal