When I was in seventh grade, I had a teacher who challenged the class to defend the idea promulgated in the Declaration Of Independence that the pursuit of happiness was a right rather than merely the description of a universal desire. I don't remember what I thought then but the question has stalked me since. Here is my 2007 attempt at keeping that teacher happy:

The emphasis upon being permitted to pursue happiness is the recognition that no one else can figure it out for you. Further, you can't even figure it out for yourself at any given moment. That is why it is a pursuit.

So it is your right to pursue happiness because it is a wrong for others to force their answers to this question upon you.

Therefore, the right to pursue happiness is bound up with protecting the individual from the tyranny of living with other people.

So it is a matter of Jefferson preceding Sartre on the way toward living with uncertainty without freaking out.

Happiness is certainly a tricky thing. Sometimes I just feel happy and I'm not sure why. Other times I only realise that I was happy once I am no longer. I usually find happiness in relaxation or in the satisfaction of completing a job...

I don't think it makes sense to suggest that religion has the happiness market cornered. Non-religious people I know are on average just as happy as religious people I know. I think that religion might have the market on comfort-seeking covered, though.

Also, I'm sure that there's someone out there who would contend that happiness is indeed a green egg!

1. The feeling of having accomplished something (also the surge you feel as you are in the process of accomplishing things).

2. My wife of 33 years.  She makes me laugh and smile and never lets me feel alone in the world.

3. My children who are constantly amazing me that people that bright and wonderful benefited from my DNA in anyway.

4. The sound of my grandchildren's voices as they say, "Pop Pop."

5. The wag of my dog's tail as he greets me when I come in the door and watching him jump up and down and bark at the animals on the big screen TV.

Illegitimi non carborundum.

The option to travel, the option to go to a hospital for healthcare, the option to drink clean water. The option to have kids and send them to the school of your choice.

The option to live in a nice neighborhood.

The more options, the more happier.

Memory is a strange bell, jubilee and knell.

I dunno.. one of these could make me pretty happy I bet.

Other than brief, and fortunately quickly forgotten, moments of anger or pain, I think I'm pretty much always happy.  And that includes times when I'm sad, because for whatever reason occasionally being sad is something I crave.

What makes me happy are generally simple things.  Small epiphanies, executing something that requires some skill and/or intelligence, making people laugh, people making me laugh.  I tend to find a lot of joy in the quotidian, not just the big events of life.

There is a milieu that guarantees me being as happy as happy gets, and that's being on the ocean.

Happiness, for me, is when my two year old realizes that the random seeming sounds he makes are actually intelligable words, with a purrpose. Having a special needs child 'get' something is always good. The difference between ceral and Cheerios is huge.
Happiness is my youngest boy walking, talking, and doing all that other great, earlytoddler, things right on cue, alleviating any conern we may have over caring for two special needs kids.
Happiness is realizing that my oldest is reading way ahead of his level, that Hubby and I must have done something right by him, thus alleviating some of the guilt that comes from wondering if I spend enough time with him in comparison to the other two.
Happiness is having a Hubby who is willing to work his but off so I can stay home with the kids.

I never realized before I had my own family how happy the little things about them make me.

Happiness is not being a Doctors toy. In not having to take any chemotherapy, nor having to take radiation treatments and finally healing from the surgery, and the infections. Happiness is having good health and knowing what it is like to have poor health.

Happiness, as differentiated from joy, means "satisfaction" to me. I don't mean "satisfaction" in a Rolling-Stones-I-Can't-Get-No- way. I mean being satisfied. My health is quite good, and I have a few remaining beloved family members. I have a modest home which meets my needs and a job that demands no hardship in an industry that interests me. I live with my soulmate, which is a blessing I never expected.

I don't make much money. I don't have a lot of possessions. I'm not beautiful. I'm smarter than some but dumber than many. But you know, I choose to be satisfied with my life. I enjoy some level of intellectual curiosity, I read a lot, I have some hobbies. I experience joy from some pretty simple things; I've given over my vegetable garden to the rabbits because I like watching them.

Choosing to be satisfied has made me happy. I could choose to keep up with the Joneses, to select my spouse based on the thickness of his wallet, to have a lucrative career that eats my soul, to stagger under huge consumer debt... but I choose something else.

If you're happy, and you know it, clap your hands.

Happiness is the absence of unhappiness.

Tipping Sacred Cows