Asha Gupta
International days are celebrated to highlight the topics or concerns that need urgent attention, such as the Environment Day, Women’s Day, UNO Day, etc. These are announced by the UNESCO from time to time. For instance, the International Happiness Day was established by the United Nations General Assembly on June 28, 2012. The idea was to highlight the importance of happiness in one’s life and promote a more equitable, inclusive and just society based upon the principle of well-being of all. Happiness is seen not only as a gift to some but as a matter of right for all human beings.
Today happiness has become a multi-billion-dollar industry these days. If somebody is seen as unhappy, it is presumed that there is something wrong with that person and s/he should see a psychologist or a therapist. No wonder, happiness has become the new religion for millions of people worldwide dealing with vast negativities on daily basis. Most of us seek happiness by pursuing power, wealth or position in the outside world without realising that it lies within us. It is our own mental framework and attitude that makes us happy or unhappy.In fact, instead of pursuing our own needs and desires, we endlessly try to emulate others and become more unhappy in the process.
Quite surprisingly, we find most men and women becoming insatiable in modern times. A poor person feels unhappy for being poor, a rich person wants to be richer. A person working in a government job feels unhappy for just being a cog, whereas an entrepreneur might be found equally unhappy for lacking free time or leisure. Similarly, an established actor or actress may feel unhappy for lacking privacy whereas a new actor or actress may feel unhappy for not being well-known. Moreover, in the era of Artificial Intelligence, Social Media or Fake News, any unpalatable remark can make us unhappy or ‘on the edge’.
Though the concept of happiness has been studied since ancient times, it remains vague and inadequately defined till to-date despite having subjects like the ‘science of happiness’. Moreover, there are many myths floating around the concept of happiness, such as, ‘the more money we have, happier we are bound to be’, ‘happiness is the ultimate goal of our lives’, ‘happiness fades away with advancing age’, ‘happiness remains conditional’, ‘we can either be happy or unhappy’, ‘our tears signify our unhappiness and our smiles signify joys’, ‘higher goals in our lives lead to higher happiness’, etc.
To some, real happiness lies in caring and sharing – the goal for the international Happiness Day in 2025. The term ‘happiness’ comes from the Norwegian /Viking word ‘hap’ which means it may or it may not happen. In the 14th century, the word happy usually implied ‘lucky’ or ‘blessed’. Earlier, in the Greek culture, the term used by Aristotle, was eudaimonia. It also implied virtuous living. In modern times, happiness my simple imply ‘feeling good’, ‘a state of joy’, ‘satisfied with overall experiences of life’, etc. However, happiness remains a state of mind and varies from person to person.
Most often, people take the hedonistic view of happiness and relate it with pleasure. They relate happiness with ‘good life ’and ‘minimizing of pain’. Later on, the utilitarians such as Jeremy Bentham and J. S. Mill, emphasised on pursuing the greatest good for the greatest number of people. To them, it is happiness that brings the best in the people. It should not be seen simply as an outcome of good fortune, better health, good performance at the workplace, better inter-personal and social relations, but as an outcome of our own rationality and intellectual contemplation. It implies that it is in our own hands to choose to be happy or unhappy in our day to day lives. Much depends on our own attitude.
Happiness and Beyond
These days happiness has become a trillion- dollar industry in the form of yoga, self -help books or meditation resorts. The positivist psychologists serve as the new priests by helping us in controlling our minds. They focus on living virtuous lives instead of simply religious lives by ‘secularizing religions.’ Earlier also, people felt happier by being engaged in religious congregations because it provided them a sense of belonging, solidarity and identity. Under Buddhism, happiness is seen both as a process as well as an outcome. It forbids us on focusing just on the ‘transient’ or ‘factorized happiness’.
Moreover, it is necessary to coordinate ‘individual happiness’ with ‘general well-being’. We all know how climate change, environmental degradation, rising pollution, global warming or depletion in ozone layer can affect our health and well-being adversely. Just as our environment contributes to our happiness and well-being, we too can contribute to our environment by being happy. But to Sigmund Freud, ‘human happiness does not seem to be the purpose of universe.’ Nor is the purpose of life to be happy. To Ralph Waldo Emerson, it is to be useful, to be honourable, to be compassionate’ and to live well.
Happiness is not same as ‘well-being.’ Just as ‘joy’ implies more than ‘happiness’, similarly well-being implies more than happiness. Broadly speaking, it implies ‘feeling good’ plus a sense of satisfaction or contentment. It also means having control over one’s life, a sense of happiness for being able to realise one’s potential to some extent’, having a sense of purpose in life’, having healthy inter-personal and social relations, etc. Well-being actually lies in creating a balance between individual happiness and community well-being.
However, like many other concepts, happiness is not free from paradoxes. The biggest paradox lies in the fact that we always find it elsewhere whereas it lies just within us! Often, we make a mistake of relating our desires with our needs. We feel unhappy when our desires are not met without realising that there is enough on the planet earth for our needs but not enough for our ever-rising or mounting desires. Most of our sufferings are due to our uncontrolled desires. Drugs can only create a false sense of happiness among us, they cannot make us happy.
Actually, the pursuit of happiness remains a mission impossible. The more we pursue it, the more unhappy we are likely to become. Happiness, in fact lies in the process and certainly not in the destination. If the pursuit of happiness becomes an obsession, our lives can become miserable. Therefore, pursuing happiness should not become the sole goal of humankind or an obsession. Rather, one should pursue various other virtues, such as, honesty, truth, integrity, gratitude, self-respect, courage, compassion, mindfulness, altruism, etc. It is absolutely necessary to look beyond happiness to be able to live happy, peaceful and full life.
Asha Gupta
PhD Political Science, University of Delhi
Dr (Mrs) Asha Gupta is the ex-Director at the Directorate of Hindi Medium Implementation and previously Principal at Bharati College, University of Delhi, India. She is also the Convener of International Political Science Association’s Research Committee on Welfare State and Welfare Societies. Earlier, she was the Convener of IPSA RC on Military’s Role in Democratisation. A recipient of Indo-Shastri Canadian Fellowship twice, Fredrich Ebert Stiftung Fellowship twice, Norwegian Fellowship for a project on Welfare state, UGC Career Award in Humanities for a postdoctoral project on the Welfare State and the Issue of Privatization. She was selected for the Major Research Project by the UGC on Vocationalization and Privatization of Higher Education in India. Dr Gupta has published 12 books, edited 1 book and co-edited 1 book. Her books include Socialism in Theory and Practice, Changing Perspectives of the Welfare State, Beyond Privatization: A Global Perspective, Higher Education in the 21st Century: Looking Beyond University, Changing Perspectives of Higher Education (in Hindi), Comparative Government and Politics (in Hindi) etc. She has participated at various national and international conferences and published about 70 research papers. Her latest book is Happiness and Beyond: The Jain Way and Other Perspectives (Motilal Banarsidass, New Delhi. January 2025)