Happiness-Alexis

When I was in elementary school, my mom once asked me if I was enjoying it. I told her yes. She asked me if I was happy at school. Again, I said yes. But when she asked me why, I was stumped. It wasn’t a difficult question, she was simply asking me why I was enjoying school. But I didn’t necessarily have a reason for being happy, I just wasn’t unhappy. Back then, that was my definition of happiness: the absence of sadness. If I had no reason to be unhappy, I could find joy in any situation. I had always had my friends, and I liked my teachers and what I was learning, and that made me happy too.
Merriam-Webster defines happiness as “a state of well-being and contentment: joy.” Most people would refer to being happy when doing something they like or being with people they appreciate. However, what qualifies as happiness? It has no numerical value; it can’t be measured. Is happiness simply the absence of sadness? Is it a cause or an effect? What is the difference between happiness and positivity?
If we went strictly by the definition, someone would be happy anytime they were healthy and had all of their needs met. Well-being can be purely physical, and contentment would be an absence of any physical needs. However, happiness is an emotion. Someone can be well and technically content, but not happy. We could also look at things that cause happiness. Some of these are optimism, family, friends, love, and appreciation. So, is it impossible to be happy if you don’t have any of these things. Plenty of people would say that they are happy alone, and despite having nothing can still be happy. So, does this make optimism the sole cause of happiness? A positive viewpoint surely can make someone happy, because all negatives are taken out of the question, but is it necessary?
Let’s consider someone with depression. This is a purely chemical reason for unhappiness, but still has to do with outlook. People with depression normally can’t see a positive, and they tend to have a hard time with optimism. Can someone with depression be happy? That depends. As an overall feeling, it’s not possible, because depression is literally considered an opposite to happiness. But, that doesn’t mean that depressed people are never happy. Individual moments of happiness still happen, which means that happiness isn’t completely tied to outlook.
The truth is that there is no one meaning of happiness. As simple as the question looks, how would someone respond to the question, “Are you happy?” Can you experience happiness in one minute, or can it only happen over a long period of time?
I’d argue that happiness is different for everyone. It has to be looked at relative to a person’s life. Someone who is consistently positive may consider themselves happy at any moment, but any small inconvenience can completely reverse that. People who rarely experience happiness can find it in any relatively good moment. If happiness were always constant, then everyone would experience depression in any hard time. But overall, every person has to decide for themselves: “What makes me happy?” 

“Happiness.” ​Merriam-Webster​, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/happiness.