Why Am I Happy?

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Why am I happy? This is perhaps one of the most common questions that the average person asks themselves. Our society has become obsessed with happiness. Even in our very constitution it is written that citizens are entitled to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” (constitution). Advertisements abound that tell consumers how much more happy they will be if they were to buy a product. In this quest for positive well-being, people take many different paths. In this paper I shall be discussing three separate and distinct ways in which people pursue pleasant experiences, as well as what makes a person more likely to agree with any one perspectives. This is not a paper about happiness; this is a paper about the road to it.

Before discussing the three directions a happiness seeker may take, we must first create a working definition for happiness. Defining happiness is more difficult than one may think, however, due to the huge differences in the perception of what happiness is. Most of these differences can be accounted for by differences between hedonism and eudiamonism, as well as the different levels of happiness. Hedonism, which is defined as “temporary pleasure attainment and pain avoidance” incorporates sex, drugs, and adrenaline rushes into the causes of happiness. This perspective is diametrically opposed to eudiamonism, which is defined as “long-term well-being, sense of meaning, and self-realization.”( Ryan)

The difference in levels of pleasure refers to the subtle variations that result in a person perceiving, for example, that they are content as opposed to being overjoyed. This can be represented as a sliding scale on which ...

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...Editorial. Psychology TodaY 1 Nov. 1995. Web. 17 Mar. 2012. .

Ritz, M. C., R. J. Lamb, Goldberg, and M. J. Kuhar. "Cocaine Receptors on Dopamine Transporters Are Related to Self-administration of Cocaine." Science 237 (1987): 1219-223. Science Mag. Web. 17 Mar. 2012. .

Ryan, Richard M., and Edward L. Deci. "On Happiness and Human Potentials: A Review of Research on Hedonic and Eudaimonic Well-being." Annual Review of Psychology 52 (2001): 141-66. Annual Reviews. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. .

Weiten, Wayne. "Subjective Feelings." Psychology: Themes and Variations. Student ed. Belmont: Wadsworth, 2007. 431-33. Google Books. Cengage. Web. 18 Mar. 2012. .

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