Happiness

What is happiness?

Happiness is not something commonly experienced in the "active" sense. More often it will be a vague realisation, more often than that a sense of loss. Happy is usually something that you were, the lack of which is felt more clearly than the presence ever did.

On those few occasions, however, that the happiness is realised, it is to be seen as a sense of contentment.
It is acceptance.
You look at the world around you - your world - and feel at peace with it.

True happiness isn't anything world shattering - to the contrary, in fact -, it is a sense of inner peace.

Inner Peace is the - very personal, intuitive - idea that you have not committed any sins that you have been insufficiently punished for.

Sins are not to be seen as a Christian, Muslim, Jewish or any other religious concept. The sins in our mind are those mistakes we have made in the past that we are sorry for. Things that we feel we shouldn't have done. These may, and often will, be dictated by the society we live in, but are first and foremost a product of our own values and worth. Killing a man to obtain bread may not be a sin, whereas looking at your wife's sister may. Not being able to buy the special addition Barbie (c) for your baby girl may be a torment.
The important thing is that You, individually, feel that you have done wrong.

The same logic works for the Punishment. This does not have to be - and usually isn't - a physical form of punishment. It may come in the form of self-abasement, of self-denial, of fast, of donating vast amounts of money to people who will never know who their benefactor was. The ways of punishment are as vast as there are humans. For every human being, there are sins, for every sin, there's a punishment.

Inner peace is achieved when the sins and the punishment are in balance. You do not owe a debt to anyone, anything, and least of all to yourself.

Happiness is that easy. And that Difficult.

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Truly happy people will not be remembered. For they will not be the ones doing great deeds. Great deeds are a clear example of punishment. People pushing themselves to the brink of life, striving for the greatest, are seeking Inner Peace. The moment they have achieved it - though, don't worry, they rarely will - their momentum is stopped. The Perpetuum Mobile that is Sin & Punishment will have come to a standstill.
It isn't surprising that the most active, reactive, creative, productive people are teenagers. Who else could be less at peace?

A society where everyone is happy - the society mankind has officially strived for for ages - is doomed. Luckily - how ironic a word - this will probably never come to pass.