Happiness. What exactly is it? Webster tells me it’s “the state of being happy,” and provides the telling example, “she struggled to find happiness in her life.” From this I conclude two things: happiness is self-referential and most commonly identified by its absence.

What about “happy,” then?

Webster says, “feeling or showing pleasure or contentment.” Slightly more helpful. I suppose I could look up the definitions for “pleasure” and “contentment,” but I suspect I would find myself back where I started.

Okay, I’ll try.

Pleasure: “a feeling of happy satisfaction or enjoyment.”

Told you so. Does this mean we don’t know what happiness is, or that we can’t define it, or are those the same thing? If we can’t explain it, do we at least know when it’s present? We talk about it all the time. It’s right there in the Declaration of Independence. We are entitled, by national decree, to its pursuit; it is our natural right. But how can we pursue something that we seem to know so little about?

It must be about the acquisition of things, having the right car, the right house, husband, vacation plans and IRA. It’s about looking like a million dollars, having ten million followers, being the envy of the neighborhood and the internet. Or, maybe it’s about earning the admiration of your peers, being at the top of your profession, or simply being famous for being famous. Surely that makes a person happy.

My television agrees. So does the internet. Advertisers are certain this is true; their images, slogans and memes promise delivery with one click. Happiness accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

I don’t need to hear about the latest celebrity overdose to know that this cannot be true. We have all experienced the phenomenon of having achieved something we thought would bring us happiness only to find that it did not, that the disappointed expectation put us further away from happiness than we were while pursuing it. And yet we seem, as a culture, to spend little time reflecting on the bankruptcy of this notion — that happiness can by bought, earned, stolen or acquired. And perhaps that’s because it scares us that we know so little about, not just what happiness is, but how it arises. We seem to have no real control over its presence or absence, while the pursuit of objects and stature, the acquisition of experiences — these things we can at least set about to do. But happiness? Well, it’s a state of being, and being is tricky.

Let’s start with a qualitative inquiry. If happiness is a feeling, what is the feeling itself comprised of? Is it the opposite of sorrow? From my own experience, the answer is no. In its less intense form, I would call happiness something like “well being.” In its more intense manifestations, “joy.” But joy is a complex experience, often laced with sorrow. Why is it that when we are fully present to love, we cry? Labels are essentially boxes and are therefore insufficient to the task of telling us much about reality. But it’s useful to see that happiness often comes with sorrow in tow. Otherwise, we might be tempted to think we must get rid of sorrow, sadness and pain if we are ever to experience happiness — only to find that in stifling the one, we have killed the other.

Here’s one conclusion I can get behind: happiness arises in an environment of acceptance. By saying yes to whatever is present, we allow happiness to exist.

How about a causal inquiry? What makes us happy? We’ve already found that circumstances aren’t necessarily correlated to happiness. Being rich, beautiful, famous, and accomplished are no guarantee of it. If not causal or correlative, is there some other relationship between circumstances and happiness? Perhaps it’s in how the circumstances are held.

I’ve explored this terrain on both sides of the fence: having, and not having. I had a rough coming of age. I experienced a personal tragedy of sorts right around the age I was trying to become an independent person in the world. I lost someone that I loved. I also didn’t know what I wanted to “be,” and it all seemed rather dreary, this idea of spending one’s life as “this” or “that,” a doctor or a lawyer or an accountant, punching in, punching out. My romantic relationships had a distinctly Woody Allen flavor to them, like that quote, “I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.” If I was interested, I made sure they weren’t… eventually. If they were interested, I concluded they must be losers, as evidenced by their taste in women. My inner life had imploded. As sometimes happens when people experience personal tragedies, I couldn’t cry, even though I was desperately sad — unless I was in the dark, in a movie theater, by myself. Disney movies were the best for this; as soon as the lights went down and the little mermaid started singing, I would start balling, silently. I’m good at silent crying.

A pretty pathetic picture, isn’t it? But not too uncommon. Grief is a brutal teacher, but if we are open, it can teach us everything. The circumstances of my life were a reflection of my alienation from myself, and even at the time, in the depths of my despair, I could see the trap I had fallen into. I could see that I must make amends with myself if I were ever to “have” the things that seemed to promise joy. It is often when people lose everything that they gain the world, which is pretty much what happened to me.

I spent my twenties falling in love with myself, which is not an easy thing to do. You know how it is. You live with yourself all the time, know all your dirty secrets. Love that? Yes. Love that. Having fallen in love with myself, I decided it was okay if an amazing man fell in love with me too. By the end of my thirties, I had moved way beyond my wish list. I had the beautiful house and the beautiful children and vacations galore. And all of that was okay with me. I didn’t have to sabotage it because I’d already gotten to know the very worst about myself and had chosen it; I had already lost everything, including, very nearly, my mind, and that had been okay too. And so, not having anything to lose, I was able to accept the bounty of the world that was dropped into my lap.

Was I, then, happy?

I think what I’ve discovered it that, by itself, having “it all” does not make one happy, just as having “nothing” does not deprive one of happiness. Maintaining a state of integrity, balance and harmony in my relationships and my life has allowed for something to begin to blossom, slowly, like a fist unclenching. Consciousness starts to relax. The circumstances of my life are an expression of something more fundamental, an attitude towards myself and life, a set of life-giving habits, and an awareness that I am at the source of my experience. I am not a pawn of circumstance, no matter how paltry or grand. I have myself, and it is from there that happiness arises. Not out of my head — happiness is not an idea. Not out of my circumstances — it is not dependent on temporal conditions. Not even out of my heart, which is filled with many seemingly contradictory feelings, all of which are part of what I call happiness. The experience is more kinesthetic than mental or emotional — it is a place I reside, an allowing, an invention. It’s in the present moment, or it is nowhere. It’s ungraspable, a gift from the unknown.

Happiness, — like most things, much better as a question than an answer. What does it mean to you?