What Will Make Me Happy?

          The answer to life, the universe, and everything is not 42. However, we want it to be, we want it to be something concrete and resolvable, something that is logical and can be worked out. Life, the universe, and everything is not simple, cannot be solved like a math problem. Likewise, the answer to happiness is not 87, or any other number that was created from an equation. Happiness may not be expressed with numbers, but we can plug ideals, activities, and people into an equation that might fit our personal happiness ‘problem’. My equation of happiness might look something like this:

2Love + ∞Learn/∑Life = Happiness (Love and be loved plus an infinite amount of learning all over the sum of my life and hobbies I love is happiness).

            I believe that I will always be loved by God, but in addition to God, I think being loved and loving just as much if not more in return another person would make me happy. From what I have observed, love is tough but overall it looks like the greatest adventure in life. Watching couples interact and be together also makes me happy because it is fun to watch the give-take and judge or guess if the partners are really committed and loving. Having someone to share everything with sounds too like a relief, you share burdens and enjoy twice as much when you help or watch each other succeed. Love just seems like a key variable in the equation of my happiness.

            The second variable I would add is learning as much as possible and keeping the curiosity I have for most academic subjects. People in history were passionate about coming up with theories and ideas, laws and principles, and explanations to questions. It would make me happy if I could respect all the hard work they did and make an effort to learn and understand what they thought. Not only is it just to fulfill happiness but also to solve problems and try to create new ideas that can simply old ones, to use these ideas to solve problems. Learning something new every day feels very good.

            Lastly are a broader and changing idea of what would make me happy, a life fulfilled with hobbies and activities I enjoy. For instance, I did not excel in team sports that required bodily contact with a ball; I picked up golf instead and find personal joy in playing and practicing. I also find a fascination with sharks and learning all about them, I think it would be really cool one day to interact with them or research them in their habitat. Playing the French horn makes me happy because I make music and contribute to an ensemble, a team. There are many other things that I can sum up to create a fulfilled life and a happy one too.

            The most important variables in the equation of my happiness are the love and the learn, a fulfilled life acts as a prize I can work on and gift myself after hard work and care. There are many life variables that can be summed up and changed and added and subtracted. So maybe happiness can be an equation, but there is no concrete number or definition as to what will make me happy.

             “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.” -Albert Camus