overocea | on happiness

I ask every person I know, if I know them well enough, if they consider themselves happy. well they usually say "oh, I don't know. yeah, I guess, pretty happy, not great, but yeah," or something similarly noncommittal. people are all over the place with noncommittal answers that don't really mean anything.

so sometimes I get them to give me a percentage, if 100 is the best and happiest and most functional they could possibly be. this works better, they stop and think for a moment, mentally measure their lives, and give me a hard, solid, heavy number.

and do you know what? i'm quite often floored by how low the number is. I mean, in general, i'm floored by the average person's answer. if I had to give an average of all the people i've asked recently, well it'd be around 55%. on average, people feel they're functioning at 55% efficiency happinesswise. it shocks me. I wonder now if they're thinking of how happy they could possibly be, or how happy they've been, or just how happy they're not..

so, me, when I ask myself.. well I can't answer my own question. I mean... well I think of myself as quite sad. I feel like i'm quite sad a lot of the time. like i'm dissatisfied and at odds with the world and just, you know, every thought a shitty stanza in an angsty adolescent's poem of pure blackness.

but then so much of the time I feel so happy! much happier than I ever see anyone else feel. and when I say see anyone else feel, and you're thinking "well how do you know, you god-wannabe, what if they're just not expressing it," well I imagine that if they're not explosively compelled to express it, like they feel they just have no choice but to shout "i'm happy!" then they're not happy enough, not as happy as I. see, I often feel so happy that I just have to shout "i'm happy!" when having coffee with a friend, or "good morning, morning!" upon stepping out the front door, or "I love you green man!" when the little crosswalkie man goes green, or "yay! it's breakfast!" when i'm hungry.

okay, now that I think about it, maybe i'm not happier than anyone else and just have impulse control issues.

nah. i'm happy.
yay!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I imagine that if they're not explosively compelled to express it, like they feel they just have no choice but to shout "i'm happy!" then they're not happy enough,

i think like that too... i hardly ever have to exclame my happieness, does that mean i am less happy than others?

i am often jelous of how happy you are, jelous in a good way, i want to suround myself with happy people so that some of their happieness rubs off on me.

on another note, i saw a documentary on happieness ages ago. they did an experiment where they gave many people little electronic devices that had an alarm that would go off at random times of the day, whenever it went off they had to answer a few short questions (onto said electronic device) about their mood, and how happy or not happy they were.

they found the same thing as you. most people average out to be only just slightly on the happy side.

P.S.
comments like, "good morning, morning" or "i love you green man" make me smile :) your happieness makes me more happy YAY!!!

I'm most assuredly not happy. Life could be worse, though, I have plenty enough worth living for.

Happieyay! This's got to be the happiest entrie I ever seen you enter! I thinkk... someone got l... er, I mean, is HAPPY YAY! =D

About time! Say hi to the little green man for me & keep up the twirlie spirit!

Hearts.

were you going to say GOT LAID?
AS IF I CAN'T BE HAPPY ANYWAY!
brat!

I wasn't going to say that at all! AS IF! You're the most darlingly-innocent person I've met in my whole entire life! =D

*giggle*

unbrat!

like the all things having opposites, how could someone know a 100% happiness if they couldn't compare it with 100% sad. so, to be merely half happie, on a scale of 1 to 100, is a fine, fortunate, proper, gentle, and balanced rating.
time is too valuable to waste it being so happy.
we can't love or be too indulgent in this life, then we will lose it, like visiting the elves for three days, whilst the world turns and sun burns, and misplacing seven years.

i'm completely the same - massifly large amounts of HAPPYOMGYAY interspersed with the occassional cracking of the sads. mostly happy. i got hit in the head by a newspaper the other day and laughed the hardest i've laughed in about 6 months, just on my hands and knees on the side of the road coughing up a lung in glee.

i'm also totally flattered you added me as a friend, your journal + you seemz pretty awesome. adding you back cos i only just noticed. DON'T MISTAKE MY LATE ADDINGNESS FOR NON-INTERESTED-NESS CAPITALZ.

My guess would be that people tend to say 55% because that is also non committal with a slight biased to the positive (mmm, I don’t know about you but that sounded like an economists answer). Anyway from my point of view, that question is mostly asked as a pleasantry, most of the time people don’t really want to know the real answer. What’s even rarer is someone giving over the time to listen properly and sympathetically to a negative answer (I do this, which is why I tend to get to know a lot about some people). So instead of talking they give the standard expected response.

Anyway, if you where to ask me that in a normal situation you will get the same answer, press me at the right time and you will find out the real story.

when I ask them to give me a percentage it's usually after they've already given the noncommittal "expected" answer they give when people ask in passing on the street etc, to which I reply in a piercing screech "THAT ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH." so it includes thinking about it a bit..

unless they just get sacared of me and only seemingly comply..

hm. something to think about. :P

Scary...no your not scary. I've meet two people who should scare me but they dont. Truely scary people have a vibe about them and arnt to overt about what they can do. you on the other hand dont have that vibe, although you try to look it *thourghtfull look*. Most people who look scary are just full of shit, goths are the classic exsample. :)

althought you not in the full of shit club....your just not scary :)

um, okay. stop now.

;)

(p.s. AM TOO *pow*)

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