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When people talk about being happy (or not), I always wonder -- why does it matter? I don't expect to be happy, and I don't strive towards it. I DO strive tow

When people talk about being happy (or not), I always wonder -- why does it matter? I don't expect to be happy, and I don't strive towards it. I DO strive towards making my life better in terms of engaging in enriching and rewarding experiences, spending time around people I care about, perhaps trying to ensure future stability to the degree I can, and generally growing as a person. Never do I consider the pursuit of "happiness". Interestingly this seems to kind of correlate with the premise of the post, where a lot of commonly-accepted definitions of "intelligence" often recognize only narrowly-defined scopes of intelligence, but not broad/overall multi-tiered general intelligence that translates to "having a good life".

porkpieshoe 27d ago
I think your objection may be to a narrower definition of happiness than what was used in the article. The article's measure is a global life evaluation that would be the product of the activities that you "DO strive towards".
- amatecha 27d ago
  Oh yeah, my initial objection is/was indeed to the seemingly-more-common definition of happiness that people often use, and then I did see that the author uses a broader scope which I agree with a lot more (insert thumbs-up emoji here) :)
wccrawford 27d ago
It sounds like you're always in the pursuit of happiness, you just don't frame it that way. You are always trying to make your life better than it is, which either leads to less misery or more happiness. 2 sides of the same coin.
- amatecha 26d ago
  Yeah, maybe! I def don't frame it as "happiness", because I don't expect to be especially happy, but hopefully content or accepting of what my life "is". I actually have worked throughout my life to accept bad/difficult things, and just "work with what I have", because there are always some pretty bad things in life, and I know the badness level will probably increase as I get older (already had numerous friends pass away, family members, etc.)

porkpieshoe 27d ago

I think your objection may be to a narrower definition of happiness than what was used in the article. The article's measure is a global life evaluation that would be the product of the activities that you "DO strive towards".

amatecha 27d ago
Oh yeah, my initial objection is/was indeed to the seemingly-more-common definition of happiness that people often use, and then I did see that the author uses a broader scope which I agree with a lot more (insert thumbs-up emoji here) :)

wccrawford 27d ago

It sounds like you're always in the pursuit of happiness, you just don't frame it that way. You are always trying to make your life better than it is, which either leads to less misery or more happiness. 2 sides of the same coin.

amatecha 26d ago
Yeah, maybe! I def don't frame it as "happiness", because I don't expect to be especially happy, but hopefully content or accepting of what my life "is". I actually have worked throughout my life to accept bad/difficult things, and just "work with what I have", because there are always some pretty bad things in life, and I know the badness level will probably increase as I get older (already had numerous friends pass away, family members, etc.)