Every day I laugh at something I find funny or smile at someone I find delightful. That rush of well-being, a momentary pleasure, is one type of happiness — a happiness that is easily gained and just as easily lost, like money in the stock market.

But there is a more permanent form of happiness: the kind you have to invest in, the kind that gives less of an immediate thrill and more of a sustained feeling of emotional well-being. This lasting happiness is something we all covet but often don’t stop to think about. Through the ages people have worshiped it. The Egyptians built temples to Hathor, their deity of happiness. The Greeks and Romans had Tyke, the goddess of luck closely associated with happiness in the ancient world. In Japan, there was Benten, one of the seven Shichi-fuku-jin, the gods of luck, fortune, and happiness. Happiness has been something we have hoped for and sought out, but not always viewed in the same way.

Our thinking about happiness has evolved. In the West, happiness went from being based on luck and chance in the time of the Greek philosophers to being regarded almost as a right in our modern-day society. In the East, ancient Buddhist and Hindu philosophers taught that happiness was something you find when you transcend the need for material possessions and live the life of the spirit. The current view in the East is slowly edging towards the modern Western idea, but the path to happiness is still seen as more communal than individualistic.

About 800,000 to 200,000 years ago our human ancestors started to experience more complex emotions, including happiness. According to the Smithsonian, earth’s climate was changing as the ice age ended; glaciers were melting. Our brains slowly started evolving and getting larger, so that they could take in more information and adapt to the ever-changing environment. Our larger brains led to more complex emotions and interactions with other beings. The seed of our modern understanding of happiness started to grow.

One of the traits that sets humans apart from other animals is self-consciousness. As cognitive biologist Ladislav Kováč writes, “Human self-consciousness changes a considerable part of emotions into feelings.” Before this step in evolution, humans had experienced feelings, but not been able to connect those feelings to themselves. The difference between feelings, which all primates possess, and emotions, which are special only to humans, is language. Emotions are the way that we describe feelings; they are not the feelings themselves. Put another way, emotions are the linguistic description or understanding of the feelings, or our physiological heightening of the senses. Early humans may have been able to acknowledge good feelings and differentiate them from bad ones, but they would not be able to sense them as deeply as humans do today or have the self-awareness to know that they were feeling happy or sad. This ability to discern complicated feelings, and understand them as emotions, laid the groundwork for the concept of happiness as it is today.

Moving forward, the next large discernible shift in the philosophy of happiness in the West was about 12,000 years ago when agriculture started to be widely practiced. Once people started farming fewer people were killed by animals, since hunting was no longer the sole food source. People had a more reliable food supply, which took a major worry out of their lives, so they could cast their thoughts on other things.

Once philosophers had more time to let their minds dwell on the subject, happiness was examined more closely. Happiness was then thought to be more about luck than it is today. Rather than something that you could seek, happiness was something that would come to you if you were lucky enough. You were not fully in control of your own happiness. The ideas of luck and happiness have probably been around since our human minds developed, but they were not fully articulated until human emotions became more complex.

Greek philosophers, such as Aristotle and Plato, dedicated chapters in their writings to happiness. In their view, happiness was based on luck but could also be achieved by living correctly and doing the right thing. This might involve performing tasks that were in fact painful or unpleasant, such as giving your brother the last delicious dark chocolate cupcake even when you sorely want it for yourself. You give it to him anyway because it will make him happy and it is the right thing to do! Happiness was seen as separate from the feeling of pleasure.

In the East, Hindu and Buddhist philosophies advocated the idea that the happiness achieved from material desires was not true happiness but fleeting and soon to be gone, like water slipping through a sieve. False happiness succeeded only in making one anxious about losing it and creating an unending cycle of desire. True happiness, on the other hand, was achieved by transcending the need for material possessions and becoming one with the universe. You would be truly happy only when you could escape the cycle of birth and rebirth. It was not about you or your body, but about unity with everything and everyone around you. It could take many hundreds or thousands of years to achieve this elevated state. Compassion for others and being a productive part of society are large parts of Hinduism and Buddhism.

"True happiness, on the other hand, was achieved by transcending the need for material possessions and becoming one with the universe."

Confucius said that “the one who would be in constant happiness must frequently change.” He set down a few main guidelines to lead people to the state of constant happiness that so many humans strive to achieve. He taught that happiness came from doing things for others, from being successful in what you do, from having a moderate amount of fun, and from meeting the obligations that are set out for you. This view is fairly different from other Eastern philosophies at the time, which suggested forgetting the physical and focusing on spiritual happiness. Confucius instead proposed embracing both at the same time.

In Europe, a change gradually took hold during the Age of Enlightenment. Happiness became less a result of luck and more a human right; something that we could control. Prior to this, if you were fortunate enough you would be graced with the spirit of happiness. It used to be a great privilege to be happy; then it became more of an expectation, a state everyone could achieve at some point in their lives if their actions brought it about. In his article on the history of happiness, Peter N. Stearns attributes this shift in part to better living conditions, a change in thinking, and, most surprisingly, better dentistry that allowed humans to smile more freely!

This change manifested itself in many realms, even government. The American Declaration of Independence states that all humans have the right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” When this document was written in the 18th century, Western thinkers viewed happiness as something that could be actively sought rather than awaited.

In the East, as the world has changed and countries have become more connected and intertwined during the past few centuries, the basic idea of happiness has also changed. It has become more individualistic and now more closely resembles the Western model. However, it is still not entirely about the self. As Deborah Swallow, a leading authority on intercultural communications, says, “Happiness tends to be defined in terms of interpersonal connectedness and happiness is best predicted by how well embedded the self is in a social network.” Happiness for people in the East is still somewhat centered around being with others, not about having things and constantly wanting more.

Generally today’s view of happiness is a more materialistic, individualistic philosophy. This is especially true in the West, but also to some degree in the East. Every day people spend millions of dollars on things that will supposedly make them happier than they already are. I believe that happiness is not something that can be bought with any amount of money. As Buddha said, “Happiness does not depend on what you have or who you are; it solely relies on what you think.” Happiness has to come from inside of you.

The optimist would say happiness is something you find within yourself: you choose whether you want to be happy or not. Personal happiness is in one’s own hands. It depends on how you choose to see your circumstances. The pessimist tells me that no human will ever be fully happy; the state of happiness that many strive for may be unachievable. But without happiness driving us onward, is there anything left to live for? Will humans become something else, something raw, something wrong? Is happiness one of the things that makes us human?

Humanity’s views on happiness will no doubt continue to evolve. In this age, when many feel that there is a recipe for everything, scientists are trying to find a perfect formula for happiness. Some people think it is all about physiological adaptation, a mental shift or change in response to external factors to help you maintain equilibrium. Others think that it is mostly about love, an intense physical and emotional connection with others. Yet still others take a more philosophical approach and say the secret to happiness is about how you perceive your situation.

The idea of happiness has shaped our world and continues to do so as we speak. For, as Aristotle writes in Nicomachean Ethics, “All human actions serve a common purpose: the pursuit of happiness.”

Sources

^{“Aristotle.” The Pursuit of Happiness. http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/aristotle/}

_{“Cult of Thyke: Ancient Greek Religion.” Theoi Greek Mythology. April 2015. http://www.theoi.com/Cult/TykheCult.html}

_{“How to Be Happy, Confucian Style.” PsyBlog RSS. January 24, 2008. http://www.spring.org.uk/2008/01/how-to-be-happy-confucian-style.php}

_{“What Does it Mean to Be Human?” “Brains.” Smithsonian: National Museum of Natural History. http://humanorigins.si.edu/human-characteristics/brains}

_{Kováč, Ladislav. “The Biology of Happiness: Chasing Pleasure and Human Destiny.” EMBO Reports. Nature Publishing Group. April 2012. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3321158/}

_{Mcmahon, Darrin M. “A History of Happiness.” YES! Magazine. October 1, 2010. http://www.yesmagazine.org/happiness/a-history-of-happiness}

_{Polansky, Ronald M. The Cambridge Companion to Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.}

Ricard, Matthieu. “A Buddhist View of Happiness.” Oxford Handbooks Online (2013).

_{Sharma, Rohit. “What’s the Differences between Feelings and Emotions?” Quora. April 4, 2016. https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-differences-between-feelings-and-emotions}

_{Shenk, Joshua Wolf. “What Makes Us Happy?” The Atlantic. June 1, 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/06/]-makes-us-happy/307439/}

_{Stearns, Peter. “The History of Happiness.” Harvard Business Review. January 1, 2012. https://hbr.org/2012/01/the-history-of-happiness}

_{Swallow, Deborah. “Happiness: East vs West Differences in Perceptions” DeborahSwallow.com. August 2009. http://www.deborahswallow.com/2009/08/19/happiness-east-vs-west-differences-in-perceptions/}