Mind Moves:Happiness is elusive. It is the state that is most desired, least defined and most difficult to attain. Even when acquired, it is not always recognised, so that it becomes apparent by its absence only when it is lost, writes Marie Murray.
It is then that we wish that what we had was savoured. There is some grief, as Dante reminds us, in recalling "a time of happiness when in misery".
Happiness cannot be bought. It is least obtainable when it is actively sought. It is neither achieved through hedonism nor asceticism, particularly when gaining happiness is the goal.
Happiness cannot be sold. But the belief that it can be produced, packaged and purchased brings wealth to those who peddle promises of pleasure and it brings disappointment to those who believe that happiness can be obtained in this way.
Happiness is not wealth. While it may be better to be miserable in comfort, and while poverty and unhappiness are certainly linked, wealth alone is no guarantee of feeling good. Research into the happiness of lottery winners shows how little possessions per se contribute to contentment and it is not until one has lost their health that health becomes defined as true wealth.
Positive psychology supports the philosophical-theological perspective that longing for things makes us unhappy. Psychology has also attempted to identify the states, traits, the types of people, the familial conditions, the educational experiences and the social environment most conducive to feelings of wellbeing, self-esteem, optimism and happiness. To paraphrase Freud, it has, at least endeavoured, to turn utter misery into "normal human unhappiness".
And this is important, as one of the major blocks to happiness that arises clinically is the belief that young people, in particular, have that they are somehow psychologically deficient if they are not happy all the time and that they are personally to blame if they seek a deeper meaning than self-indulgence in their lives.
This is why existentialism may reassure them that it is okay sometimes to view our world as utterly absurd and to seek to redefine ourselves within it, to sometimes march to a different tune and to compose one's own melody in life.
The requirement to be happy has been foisted upon us as a right, an obligation and a measure of our psychological stability as if feelings of unhappiness are indices of psychological volatility and vulnerability. This makes the unhappy feel guilty and the happy feel anxious.
Instead, our major psychological challenge today might be to understand and tolerate the vicissitudes of life.
It may be to accept that we are lucky if happiness visits sometimes, if tragedy does not strike, if we experience no more than the usual uncertainties, disappointments, losses, self-doubt and injustices that are the weave of living and of life and if we can retain a reasonable optimism when things go wrong.
The quest to discover, delineate, describe and define happiness is endless. For what is this happiness we seek? For some it is acceptance of oneself in all one's eccentricity. It is work well done. It is adversity overcome. It is "something to do, someone to love and something to hope for". It is "filling the hour".
It is looking forward to tomorrow. It is getting through today. It is knowing that life will be better. It is being glad that things are good.
Happiness may be "matching our wants to our possessions and our ambitions to our capacities". Alternatively, it may be Michelangelo's desiring more than we can accomplish, poet Robert Browning's joy in reaching beyond our grasp or Hawthorn's "butterfly beyond that grasp" which alights upon us when we sit.
It may be music that invades the soul. It may be silence. It may be solitude. Happiness may be holding a new novel or the tattered, much thumbed copy of the text that we love best. It may be a day gardening. It is sea and sky. It is fishing. It is walking. It is talking. It is righting a wrong. It is unexpected affirmation. It is being accepted by the crowd.
Happiness is loving and being loved. Happiness is people. It is friends. It is in the eyes of those we care about. It is letters received. It is cards that wish us luck. It is exams that go okay. It is a feeling, an emotion, a belief, an idea. It is holding one's newborn or one's own child's child. It is remembering former happiness.
It is believing in future happiness. It is Horace's valuing the day and calling the day one's own. It is not being emotionally anaesthetised. It is not asking if we are happy, for then it flies away.
But what is most extraordinary and significant in all the work in relation to human happiness is that the ingredients that emerge most often as being useful in our quest for happiness are optimism, altruism, gratitude, forgiveness and fulfilment.
This is because happiness is a form of love. Because like love, and let us not forget that tomorrow is Valentine's Day, "love is a condition in which the happiness of another is essential to our own" and research on happiness equally shows that our happiness increases when we give happiness away.
Clinical psychologist Marie Murray is director of the Student Counselling Services, University College Dublin.