Happiness Is...

The predicate of this sentence is a tricky one to define. The Beatles said it was a warm gun. An NPR study says it's contagious. Some believe it is handcraft dollhouse miniatures for the collector.

I don't know if I fit into any of these definitions, but I've been trying for some time to define happiness on my own. This definition quest has been a journey to find happiness, one which I undertake each and every day of my life.

I recently finished a class for my graduate degree entitled Seeking Happiness: A Philosophical Journey. We read works professing ways towards happiness, written by philosophers Lao Tsu, Buddha, Epictetus, Al-Ghazzali, and the contemporary author Derrick Bell. I learned a wealth of information on the topic, and I can give you a general idea of what type of happiness I am necessarily seeking, but I cannot tell you when and if I have found it.

I summed up my quest for happiness and my overall definition of myself (as I think they should be one in the same) in the following meandering way:
I like to think I am defined by the small things that make up my life. The movies I watch, the songs I listen to, the books I read, the quotes I love. I can assign titles to myself--English teacher, Graduate student, ardent Delaware Blue Hens fan--but those titles don't mean much to define me as a person. They are too broad. There are thousands of English teachers, Grad students, and Blue Hens fans out there, of which I am only one. My intricacies make up my personality. I am a thinker. I am a philosopher. I am a teacher and a student. I am a person who cares, sometimes too much. But I am also a person who will never stop searching to find out who I am. I will constantly be in a quest for happiness, to fulfill Socrates' doctrine that "The really important thing is not to live, but to live well." If I can be myself and figure out how to live well in the process, I have succeeded.

I am content with my definition (note the word choice), but I'd like to include here a quote from a fellow classmate, Lisa Caselles, who had a very unique and inspiring definition of happiness, one that I think if I lived by, I'd live a life of happiness.

"Mostly, I will remember that happiness is a choice and that I have the power to choose to be happy. I will practice gratitude and solitude and ground myself in that which is important and forget that which is not." - Lisa Caselles