Happiness. We want it. We crave it. We strive for it. But what exactly is it? If you ask most people this question, they’re likely to describe happiness as a “good feeling”: a pleasurable feeling of joy, gladness, or contentment.
The ancient Greeks had a special word for a life based on the pursuit of happy feelings: hedemonia, from which we get the word hedonism (seeking pleasure).
We all enjoy pleasurable feelings, so it’s hardly surprising that we chase them. However, like all human emotions, feelings of happiness are fleeting; they come and they go. No matter how hard we try to hold on to them, they never hang around for long.
And as we shall see, a life spent in pursuit of “feeling good” is, in the long term, deeply unsatisfying. Indeed, research shows that the harder we chase after pleasurable feelings and try to avoid the uncomfortable ones, the more likely we are to suffer from depression and anxiety.
