What does it mean to be happy?

Every man on the planet tends to achieve a vaguely defined state, usually known as “happiness”.
For most of the people life is… well… unsatisfactory.

Take some simple situation as an illustration.

Take some teen as an example. He tends to be happy. Wants to accomplish something, to be something. And there are a lot of choices in front of him. He can become a doctor for example. To get power to cure people, to save their lives. That’s very nice and kind choice, but demands a lot of learning and hard work. From that perspective, maybe the best thing to be chosen is to become a star – movie, TV, music, whatever.
If you disagree, take some simple experiment. Step out on the street. Ask the first ten people you come across on, who Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are; then ask them who the last Noble laureate of medicine was. You would quickly realize what’s the more important to the average people.
Thus, we have a postulate – if I become a star, I’ll be happy. I’ll be in possession of fame, influence, money, I’ll date the most beautiful women/men (as you like) in the world – all those things people want to possess. In other words, all stuff people think will make them happy.
Now, take a quick look at the people who achieved this dream.
An actor, after hardworking years finally becomes a big star. Happiness! Well-being! A couple of days, weeks, months he’s completely happy. Maybe even for a couple of years.
But one day he wakes up and doesn’t feel happy anymore. He has fame, money, everything you can imagine, but no happy. Why? Why is that so?
Well, people get accustomed to what they have. Achieved goal quickly ceases to be a source of happiness: it becomes a simple part of background of life and doesn’t carry quality of novelty… doesn’t have emotional excitement anymore.

Afterward, the following situation happens… ok, if I buy a big house on the beach, maybe it will make me happy. What about buying a super fast car? Or dating this actress? In the end, after a couple of failed relationships the star we’re talking about ends up in a rehab centre, trying to quit using drugs he used in his last attempt to find happiness.
Analogies to this example you can find all around you, in people’s everyday lives. Most of the human behavior can be explained by the following position - people constantly try to achieve a (practically impossible) state in which they could be happy forever.

If you don’t believe me, look at the most popular strategies for solving this problem:

1. First of them implies constant goal scoring. Ok, I graduated but I’m not happy; I’ll be happy when I find a job. Ok, I got hired, but I’m not happy. I’ll be happy when I buy an apartment. Ok, I bought a flat but I’m not happy. I’ll be happy when I get kids. Ok, I have kids but…
2. The second strategy consists in trying to avoid thinking about this theme. Man sets his own goals: to graduate, find a job, work, have a family and kids... There are things needed to be done in every moment – “I don’t know if I’m happy, but I need to earn money to pay rent.” Day by day, problem by problem, life goes on, people die... They’ve never asked themselves if they were happy, so they’ve never had chances to fall in existential crises. They lived an average life, solved average problems…

But there is also an alternative for those 2 strategies. Instead of an endless stream of goals, or mindless chasing fake life goals, a person can try to find something else - ‘profound meaning of life’.
Maybe the only way is to choose some problem which is practically unsolvable (at least during one’s man life cycle). For example, to eliminate famine in Africa. Or to stop spreading AIDS. That’s the motivation of various activists.
The other way of searching for the meaning of life assumes faith. Believing, without any evidence, in existence of deeper meaning.
The meaning of life then becomes, without extra thinking, following the laws of specific confession, applying those laws on everything we can find around us, and carefully ignoring everything that can make a negative impact on our faith.

I must emphasize those categories aren’t separated. Most of the people use different strategies in their ways of finding happiness. It’s only about the level to which we follow one of the mentioned strategies.
To sum up all mentioned. What usually happens to all of those stars that succeed to accomplish everything that ordinary man is convinced that brings happiness (money, women, fame, power) – and who later found out they still aren’t happy?

• Some of them are tricked into an endless shopping fits and accumulation of larger material goods. Those usually end up in a rehab center.
• Some find superior meaning in solving unsolvable problems. Concerts for help suppressing hunger in Africa, collecting money to cure AIDS, or some other kind of activism
• The others may end up in cults or becomes aggressively religious

Contrary to stars, ordinary man faces almost the same choices, except its range of life alternatives are much narrower (no big amount of money, thus much time is spent on proving the basic needs).

What makes you happy? :)