What is happiness?

On Friday night, I visited my parents for dinner. After dinner, I helped my mom fill out a screening questionnaire for a potential research study (she loves those things because the incentive can be quite generous). Then we came upon this question:

Describe what happiness means to you.

She struggled for several moments and asked me to type her dictation. Something along the lines of “to be satisfied, to not want”. The question requested for 5-7 lines. She had two and I pressed her to come up with a few more. Eventually, she asked me to fill it for her.

I said no, do you want me to leave to give you privacy?

No, she said. And after I ad-libbed a few more words, she was able to come up with three lines.

But what is happiness? And do most people have trouble to describe the word in words? Even succinctly? Like my mom?

After writing every day for so long, I have gotten in the habit of letting words pour out. Pour endlessly and trust that I will be able to edit it later. (Or not as I usually do.) But with that question, I could imagine many answers. From cliched — to have shelter, health, and food. From spiritual — a bright light beating shining around me. From emotional imagery — the way that I feel when I stand underneath bright sunlight, the warmth brushing across my skin reminding me that I am still here. From memories — just like how as a kid my father handed me a bowl of ice cream, the right amount, the right temperature, all delivered with a loving smile.

What makes it difficult to describe something so simple? When I can easily create those words?

Or that some people naturally think more than others? That words become easily our form of expression? What if you’re a person where expression was so limited and you were never invited to express? And so you never developed that skill to get other people to understand you? That the words that you spoke were all that existed? How trapped that would be for me to be constrained in a box of no words, no language, no flexibility, no windows.

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