Concept of Happiness Essays - Happiness, Positive Mental Attitude

Concept of Happiness Happiness alludes to the degree to which one judges his or her overall quality of life as entire favorably. This simply implies the extent to which a person likes the life he or she leads. I understand that happiness comes when a person feels satisfied and fulfilled. It is one's feeling of contentment that his or her life is just as it ought to be. From this understanding, the concept of happiness entails certain terms that include degree, individual, subjective and judgment. In regard to degree, it should be understood that the word ''happiness'' normally is not used in denoting only positive appreciations in life. It refers to the degree which is less or more of something. When a person is said to be happy, it means that this person judges his or her life favorably as opposed to unfavorably. The individual term in the definition implies that the term happiness is actually employed in describing an individual person's state only and not in collectiveness. Also, happiness is the subjective life appreciation by a person. Therefore, there is no a particular objective standard for happiness. Judgment entails a person making an overall judgment in regard to the quality of their life. This means happiness is an intellectual activity. To make an overall judgment requires one to assess past experiences and estimate the future experiences as well as average life quality. Considering the concept of happiness, I would rather be an unhappy human and not a happy pig. This is because an unhappy human has the intellectual capacity of conceptualizing the past and future experiences of life and be able to estimate the degree of happiness in their life. An unhappy human, therefore, knows both sides of the coin because he or she is able to tell when life is favorable and unfavorable. However, the happy pig does not know the two sides of life because of the lack of intellectuality. By the fact that the word happiness is used for those who are able to make their mind through constructing intellectually their overall judgment of life, the concept of happiness cannot apply to animals. Therefore, I would rather be an unhappy human as opposed to being a happy pig.