There are essentially two types of happiness, which can be further divided into different chunks. The one type is the most important.
In this post, we are going to look at different types of happiness. We are also going to understand if a certain kind of happiness is worthier over another kind.
Just look at your life and go through the kinds of happiness you experience. One kind of happiness may be a subset of the other kind of happiness. However, that’s for another post. In this post, we will look at defining happiness in multiple categories without looking at subcategories.
Let us get into understanding the types of happiness.
1. Routine happiness
Most of your life is routine. You get up in the morning. You go to school/college/office, come back and spend the rest of the day either with family or with friends or doing something by yourself. This is followed by sleep and the routine continues the next day.
This, for most people is 5 days a week, which is most of the year. The weekends aren’t routine since you can do what you want with them and spend them as you like. Now, routine happiness or the absence of it, is the most important part of your life. However, over time, for most people even weekends are routine.
If you have a happy routine, you have a happy life, because that’s where you are spending most of your time. If you don’t have a happy routine, you are looking for escapes-escape from your weekdays, from your city, from your country.
When you have to look for happiness outside your routine, majority of your life is really fucked up, and you are not admitting it.
This is the most important type of happiness. If your routine is not happy, you need to really fix your life.
2. Escape or holiday happiness
The second kind of happiness is what the majority of the world craves for. They hate their routines since their work gives them no joy. Many people do not even like the kind of people they are married to, especially in developing countries where arranged marriages are still a norm.
Therefore, people crave for escapes.
A weekend is an escape.
A holiday is an escape.
The problem with this kind of happiness is that it stems from the problem of an unhappy, colorless schedule. Most people live ordinary, dispassionate lives. They don’t feel passionate about anything. As an outcome, their routine is dull and monotonous, which makes them believe that somehow escapes will solve everything. They travel to find happiness. They go away from their routines.
Unfortunately, by the time their escape is over, they feel miserable again.
3. Superficial happiness
A lot of people ask if money buys happiness. Yes, money does buy happiness and that of the superficial kind. The absence of money is a problem since it will lead to pain because you won’t be able to pay your bills for the essentials of your life. However, the kind of happiness money buys is fleeting and superficial.
It doesn’t last long and it’s not the source of deep and meaningful happiness that can only come from self-awareness and connecting deeply with the world.
Let’s say you buy a car when you have a lot of money but you have nobody to celebrate your car with. Your relationships suck. No matter how expensive the car, it won’t give you happiness.
Even if you have healthy relationships, the car will give you happiness for a certain period of time and then your schedule will take over. If you hate your job, which is the source of your car, you will start to hate the car too.
Therefore, the kind of happiness that money buys is superficial.
4. Deep happiness
I call this kind of happiness- happiness in your skin. If you look back at your life and try to think about the moments where you were so happy that you had goose bumps, those are the moments where you experienced this kind of happiness.
You need deep, meaningful happiness that takes the shallow out of your life, and you find life joyful and full of purpose. Your days have depth and meaning. You look forward to life.
This is the kind of happiness this blog is about.
Now, we could actually divide happiness further into different buckets, but at a broad intellectual level, these are the major buckets. On an everyday basis, you could do multiple things that may give you joy.
For example, you could walk your dog which may give you joy. Now, the kind of happiness that you feel when you walk your dog could be deep or superficial depending on why you are doing it.
If you are doing it, out of love for your dog, it would be deep. If you are doing it because your father has promised you a pizza after you have walked the dog, then you won’t really do the job well, and the happiness would be at best superficial or non-existent.
Fundamentally, what we need to understand is the source of the happiness. Your happiness should stem from deep understanding about your life, and your life purpose. It should stem from creating the kind of routine where you do things you want to do- be it professional, personal or solitude driven.
Two main types of happiness
The two types of happiness that you really need to create from this list are routine happiness and deep happiness. Now, this means one and the same thing. If you have a meaningful routine which has been carefully carved with things you love to do, whether it be your work or spending time with your partner, you will experience deep happiness.
You would want to avoid a kind of lifestyle where you are regularly experiencing escape happiness. You don’t want it. If you are always dreading coming back to your schedule and keep escaping it, life is not going in the right direction. Take a U-turn and recalibrate.
You would also want to avoid superficial happiness. Seek pleasure but avoid superficiality. Avoid buying things to impress other people while you continue to feel miserable inside. All that matters is how you feel inside and not what others think of you.
I sincerely hope you find depth, and deep happiness in your routine.
Thank you for reading.
The purpose of this blog to help you find your happiness. Please read the other posts on the blog, and follow so that you get updates when new posts are published. Please share any posts you like with your friends so that they can also find their happiness. If you have any feedback for me, please leave it in the comments and I would be happy to work on it. If you would like to support my writing and this blog, you may please send a donation through PayPal here.
I appreciate the time you spent in reading the blog and wish you happiness.
Love,
Amarvani
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