Question: After suffering from a life-threatening heart condition leading to open-heart surgery and almost losing your husband to a heart attack, did happiness take on a new meaning?
Response: Of course. Now happiness is living one more day to see my wonderful husband, my daughter, and my precious granddaughter. Without that, life would be unbearable. Happiness is also knowing that those you love are happy and satisfied with their lives.
Question: Do you think your opinion of happiness will change in the future?
Response: Not likely, I mean I am 83 years old. Not much about me is gonna change at this point in my life.
(S. Burkhert, personal communication, March 23, 2012)
Interview with Doug
Question: What does Happiness mean to you?
Response: Happiness is doing what I want when I want, not answering to anyone, and having enough money to do whatever. It’s about being comfortable with whom I am as a gay man with a daughter and as a young adult with so many things I want to …show more content…
However, after interviewing two totally different people, reading Chapter 7 in The Art of Being Human, and analyzing my own thoughts about happiness, I do not believe Aristippus’ definition to be accurate. To some, it’s about raising a family and enjoying life’s little moments, to others it’s about personal happiness at any cost, and to a few it is about doing good deeds for other people. Happiness can be fleeting or ever-lasting, can be spiritually influenced or materialistic. For every person, happiness takes on a different …show more content…
Without happiness, we are nothing more than God-made robots. We were made to feel empathy, sympathy, joy, sadness and other sordid emotions. Happiness is supposed to be the most cherished of emotions according to the emotional state theory of happiness (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/happiness/). Of all theories of happiness I have researched through the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, I agree the most with the life satisfaction theory. This theory states that happiness is a positive outlook on a person’s whole life not just a few selected