The upwelling of positive feelings that we
have when we are “happy” is also an evolutionary
adaptation and it really signals that what
we experience is beneficial for us.
Something that really enhances our lives or
protects us or gives us joy like a newborn
or a new relationship or something like that.
But if we were constantly happy we wouldn’t
see any threats that potentially are around
the corner.
So there is basically a positive and a negative
wave that goes through our lives.
Negative when we perceive things that are
potentially threatening to us and positive
when there are things that are really life
enhancing.
Having said that I believe that we have an
underlying positive attitude towards life.
We prefer to live than not to live.
And again we have to have that.
So the baseline is not zero where we have
some days above zero and some days below zero.
But the baseline is positive in and of itself.
In Greek they have two different words for
happiness.
One is hedonic and that’s the typical pleasure
of happiness, you know.
The joyful like oh, this is wonderful and
great.
And then they have a word called eudaimonia
and that is that positive baseline that simply
is a joy of simply living.
There is so much happening in our lives that
we pay attention to and quite frankly, you
know, the little devices that we carry around
don’t help very much because our attention
gets totally absorbed into that attraction
from these little devices.
And we get a little bit of dopamine all the
time when we get information, information
is valuable instinctively.
So we want to know what’s happening and
what’s going on.
That’s true for gossip and it’s true for
why we watch the news.
But the problem is that our attention is so
much absorbed in that that we rarely, if ever,
pay attention to just being present.
And that is really what mindfulness and meditation
is trying to balance out a little bit so that
when the mind quiets and you actually are
at home in your body that that distraction
fades away and you actually get in touch with
that underlying happiness that the Greeks
call eudaimonia.
Just to recognize I’m alive.
Just that simple fact is in and of itself
positive.
And that does not waver.
That is always there.
And that quality of happiness is there even
when sad things happen, you know.
So you cannot be always happy because if a
loved one dies, you know, obviously you’re
not happy, you’re sad.
But within that you can have still the joy
of living.
So those are two different aspects of happiness
that I think are very important to distinguish.
