What is happiness?

A student asked me:

What is happiness?

I prefer to think of happiness more as a state of being rather than a feeling. Because in my own experience, you can be happy or even content about your current situation in life without necessarily feeling positive emotions. Besides, we don’t always have feelings stirring in us 24 hours each day (that will be quite destabilising).

I like to think that a happy person is one who is fully alive, realising every potential that is within his/her own being, whenever possible. For that to happen, one must be willing to embrace challenges beyond one’s comfort zone in all aspects: socially, professionally, academically, technically, etc.

In other words, one must be constantly aiming to grow and develop one’s self. Stagnation not only breeds complacency, but it eventually makes one feel very directionless, and you eventually lose your sense of purpose and meaning. I have not met anyone who enjoys being in this state. So I don’t think you can ever be happy (I definitely have never been happy when I feel that I have no sense or purpose).

My greatest inspiration is Captain Ho Weng Toh, the 100 year old WW2 veteran and the pioneer and “father” of pilots in SIA. I interviewed him over 9 months to help him write his memoirs. And he is very happy at the wonderful age of 100. Even now, he has been challenging himself to grow. He sets up initiatives to help others. He makes it a point to keep in touch with everyone in his life – he even tries to meet new people. He learns to use new technology. He makes sure he is still kept up to date on current affairs (and he even talks to people young and old to understand their perspective about the matter). He has never let age be the reason to not get out of his comfort zone. He even has a girlfriend!

People like him truly exemplify what it means to be happy, what it means to be fully alive. And that is how I view happiness.