Emotional Continuum?

Lately I've been thinking a lot about this question:

Is happiness relative or absolute?

For a long time, I've thought that happiness is absolute. For instance, there's a point, a place that people reach where they know that they're content with their lives. The point where they can say, "I'm truly happy."

But then I've been thinking, there are certainly times are more happy than others... just as there are times that people are more sad than others... which would imply that everything's on a continuum. This is a bit depressing for me, as I've always thought of that one point of bliss and contentment in a somewhat idealistic light.

Then again, happiness might be a point on the emotional continuum that people know they cross. Or maybe it's a region. I don't know...

But I'd like to know your thoughts.

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Absolute happiness? No way. Life has ups and downs. To truly appreciate the ups we have to experience the downs. I personally wouldn't even want to reach a point where I could sit back and say, "Now I will be happy forever." How boring is that? Plus...and this is something I've only recently learned...looking back on the bad times I've gone through in my life, I can almost always see some good that came out of those times.

Mixing a little unhappiness/sorrow/pain in is essential. I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

It really bothered me when I realized that a while ago - that no matter how hard you work to get to a certain point, there will always be more work to do, more sadness, more hard times, more bullshit. Sometimes I wonder what the point of even trying is - why even bother trying to pull myself out of a hole if I'm gonna fall into another one before I can even enjoy life above ground? Makes me want to kill myself.

But hey - fuck it, right? I guess if you're lucky, you find something to live for and keep going.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

No offense starslight, but you're coming off like a spoiled brat in your post. Who doesn't have hard times? Life's a journey. You have to go through tough times in order to learn and develop character. Who do you know who hasn't suffered, been sad, been through hard times, and had to work? You're talking about killing yourself because of that? I wouldn't have things any other way.

Kids these days. =/

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

It would be my own personal Hell to reach a point where there was no more left to do; no more left to learn and no more left to experience--no more goals. I should hope that there there will always be ways for me to grow and that there always will be more goals beyond the ones I have reached. That's living to me, and I don't want to stop.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Originally Posted by AliceNWondrland

No offense starslight, but you're coming off like a spoiled brat in your post. Who doesn't have hard times? Life's a journey. You have to go through tough times in order to learn and develop character. Who do you know who hasn't suffered, been sad, been through hard times, and had to work? You're talking about killing yourself because of that? I wouldn't have things any other way.

Kids these days. =/

Well, I guess I am what I am, regardless of how I'd like to think of myself, but to elaborate a bit -

I know that everyone has ups and downs, that some part of life is always going to be unpleasant. But you keep going because you have a goal, something to work towards, someone to work for. When you reach your goal, make happy the person you're trying to make happy, then that's the good part - that makes all the bad stuff worthwhile.

The point of my post, I guess, was that life is real shitty and meaningless when you don't have something like that. I know that because that's my life. The suicide allusion was off-handed self-loathing, which is a bad habit and not helping my cause any. I was really just trying to drive home the point of finding something good to focus on when things are tough.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Ah, this reminds me of a question that I came arcross in class not too long ago (which I can't remember now). Anyway, here are my 2 cents.

I personally think that happiness is both a temporary state of emotion as well as a outlook on life. Let me first explain the latter. When one has a happy outlook on life, it means, at least to me, that one is optimistic that is, one is able to let go of things that do not matter and percieve the problems that matter as challenges in life.

On the other hand, happiness, in a mirco sense, is a temporary state of emotion. Little things like the classmate you always liked asking you to study with him/her or recieving a Christmas card from a friend whom you've not had contact in a long time. I guess these are all times where happiness counts as a temporary feeling.

FELIPE NO

Originally Posted by ElectricSheep

It would be my own personal Hell to reach a point where there was no more left to do; no more left to learn and no more left to experience--no more goals. I should hope that there there will always be ways for me to grow and that there always will be more goals beyond the ones I have reached. That's living to me, and I don't want to stop.

Well said.

Happiness is completely relative. Of course, if you want to be picky, basically everything is relative, but let's not go into that abstract realm. Happiness is defined literally as "good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy." Many people confuse contentment with being so satisfied with your current state that you don't want to leave it, even to progress beyond it. But it is merely satisfaction with yourself and the way things are, and not necessarily an unwillingness to go beyond.

As "My Dreams" has said, it is both a temporary state of emotion as well as an outlook on life. You can experience something that brings you happiness (and, coincidentally, you can choose just how happy you are about it, which I'm sure most emo kids will disagree with :P) and you can also be the optimist - choose repeatedly to find the brighter side of things. The only difference between something temporary, such as an emotion, and something continual, such as an outlook, is the continuation of the temporary thing. A dot becomes a line becomes a picture becomes a gallery becomes a building, that sort of thing. The difference is simply where you choose to stop.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I think happines is relative. Mainly because it means different for different people all around the world. People may feel happy due to certain moments and accomplishments. However, those thing only last so long and emotional patterns change everyday.

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Originally Posted by Lee-chan

For a long time, I've thought that happiness is absolute. For instance, there's a point, a place that people reach where they know that they're content with their lives. The point where they can say, "I'm truly happy."

I wouldn't say that you can reach that point with life in general, but you might be able to reach it on a personal level; being happy with what your goals are, happy with your reactions to various situations, etc. There will be times when you disappoint yourself, but overall I think reaching a general level of happiness with yourself is possible.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by AliceNWondrland

Absolute happiness? No way. Life has ups and downs. To truly appreciate the ups we have to experience the downs. I personally wouldn't even want to reach a point where I could sit back and say, "Now I will be happy forever." How boring is that? Plus...and this is something I've only recently learned...looking back on the bad times I've gone through in my life, I can almost always see some good that came out of those times.

Mixing a little unhappiness/sorrow/pain in is essential. I wouldn't have it any other way.

I agree, if we didn't have down moments in our life we could never really truly appreciate the good things in our life... A quote I heard once was "I guess some people have a lot to be happy about. Either that or we blow out our expectations so much we've given up on anything better." I think it's a pretty accurate quote.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Absolute Happiness? Weird thought.

It's been said, but life has it's ups and downs. I have been in a ton of situations where I was truly happen but time goes on and shit goes down from there. "Lifes a rollercoaster", that cliche sums shit up relatively well for me.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?