A Definition of Happiness

What is happiness? I can´t really answer that. I can say that happiness is something rarely experienced for an extended period of time. Rather it's felt one moment and not the next. Happiness always seems a very personal thing since everybody experiences happiness at different levels and for different reasons. Some are twisted and  feel happy when others suffer, and some find happiness making other people happy. Of course there are things that make everyone happy like when the national team of your country wins.
Also there are those who claim that happiness is a decision you make and that you can be happy if you want to; but that it's really difficult and perhaps very much unrealistic. If the conditions exist all you have to do is push in the right direction and then that will be enough. But that is if the conditions exist, what if they don't? Could the Jews in the WWII Germany have been happy by just deciding to be happy in spite of the horrors they were enduring? In cases like theirs happiness is only a memory from better times.
Happiness can only happen if our definition of happiness is clear to us which is why many people who could be happy are not so in situations when the rest of us would be. There is happiness in little things and that is the easiest kind to get. Life is full of those, but we choose not to see them.
I tend to find happiness in the roles I play in life. As a teacher I'm happy when I manage to inspire my students;as a writer I'm happy when what I write excites me when I read it; as a geek I'm happy when I can read new material about my favorite characters; as a movie fan I'm happy when I see a movie that makes me dream; as a husband I´m happy when I see my beautiful wife smiling. Still nothing makes my day when I arrive home and my little son sees me and smiling opens his arms up to me, he takes my face with his hands and kisses me. Being his father, knowing he is all right and that his needs are met, being with him...it makes me want nothing else. That is true happiness to me.

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