What Is Happiness?

"Are you happy?" one day I asked my brother.

"Yes No it depends on what you mean", he said.

His words reminded me that when we think about happiness we usually think of something extraordinary, a pinnacle of sheer delight. Those pinnacles seem to get rarer the older we get.

For a child, happiness has a magical quality. I remember making hide-cuts in the newly cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods... Of course, kids also experience lows...

In teenage years, concepts of happiness change. Suddenly it is conditional on such things as love, popularity, whether the zit will clear up before a night prom...

For adults, things---birth, love, marriage---bring responsibility. Love may not last, loved ones will die... For adults, happiness is complicated.

Happiness is not about what happens to us; it is about how we perceive what happens to us...