Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life. Another study from 2011 confirmed this, finding that people who have meaning in their lives, in the form of a clearly defined purpose, rate their satisfaction with life higher even when they were feeling bad than those who did not have a clearly defined purpose. "If there is meaning in life at all," Frankl wrote, "then there must be meaning in suffering."
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/01/theres-more-to-life-than-being-happy/266805/
I had a long conversation with a friend about this very topic recently. We know that we have so much, we all know that (the hashtag "first world problems" reminds us of this). We have, really, too much. More than we know what to do with.
But are we happy?
Sometimes we are. Sometimes we aren't.
For me, it's not an all-in state. I'm happy with some parts of my life, and very unhappy about other parts.
This makes me amphibious I guess, this state of some-high, some-low, but it doesn't make me
unique.
What does make me maybe more unique is the perspective I have on it.
The hard-won kind.
Living alone for ten years will do that for you.
Happy February...
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