Happiness changes with age;our goals,hopes and successes change with age too.

What do you think?

I appreciate your comments

at this age, I'm very happy to be healthy & live
blessing

I think I’ve learned that I don’t have to chase excitement to find happiness. It was there all along in the little things, like a favorite dish, an unexpected call from a friend or a finished accomlishment.

Happy, very happy! We must be happy in this life regardless of our age. Ill or healthy, rich or poor, male or female, children or adults. We should be happy because we can meet new people every day. Teach the life happiness for others. We dont know that the happiness of others is upon us. Right?

Happiness is a fleeting emotional feeling that often depends on others around us and how we interact with them. A baby without touch or attention does not thrive. People who endure all negativity, tend to be angry with the world. A person who feels alone in this world is not a happy person!!

i agree tho without some real life downs it becomes bland and jaded.
life can't be all wine and roses

I choose contentment.
Happiness is overrated.
When I learned to let go of the things I couldn't control,
my stress levels decreased and things got a lot easier.
Its much easier living with a positive mindset.

The older we get, the more mistakes we make. I felt much happier a decade ago

you can be happy at any age, so it depends on what makes you happy.

My folks are happy people, they live comfortably, they have healthy and happy children and grandchildren.

Im at a point in life where im very comfortable , no financial stress and that makes me very happy.

so my point, happiness is a personal thing

I agree, happiness is a personal thing. But if things, or people, that could make you happy, are out of reach and far away, it might be just frustrating

Chin up Lars! We all have boughts of lonliness. It’s the most human thing in the world. Try shifting your focus to a simple pleasure you enjoy or two...or three.

Thanks for your kind thoughts

Ah well, simple pleasures ... visiting the local farmer's market, buying apple tart

Happiness is an emotional reaction.
Something triggers it.
Your entire life you're changing, you're emotional triggers change, your emotional associations change.
So what makes you happy to a subjective degree is going to be slightly different at any point in time in your life and based on far more variables than "goals, hopes, and successes."

You can have the, relatively, same "goals, hopes and successes" but find decreasing levels of happiness.

Other than that, what I think is utilitarianism wormed its way too deep into western culture to the detriment of higher values or higher emotional values. Happiness is the new religion for the ignorant masses.
Sells a lot of self help books.

Let me grab a sweater and get my bag.

I see happiness as an emotional spike from center-line.
Its not supposed to have long duration.
Sadness is also a spike from center-line, again not supposed to have duration.
Anger is also a spike from center-line.

Contentment is the center-line that allows emotional spikes to have meaning.
Trying to make a spike last causes the baseline to become unstable.
It becomes difficult to find center and emotional states get wonky.
It results in unnatural emotional duration.

I've found by returning to center-line, instead of trying to hold onto an emotion, my emotional spikes have more meaning and I recover quickly from the bad ones and appreciate the good ones more.

This allows me to experience more joy in my existence.
It changes my baseline perception to positive.

I think a lot of people get confused about happiness.
They are experiencing joy and think it is happiness.
The way I test it is I say to myself;
"I am so very happy right now".
If that isn't true, I am experiencing 'joy' in my contentment.

After a lifetime of bouncing up and down from the center line, happiness can take up residence on the center line. In other words, more oft than not, I find happiness in the joy of my contentment. Lol! Do I sound like Granny Moses?

Hi Granny Moses

I had a peek at your profile earlier,
Welcome to the M2 Forums community.

Actually, I don't think happiness has changed for me ever.

It's always been basically the same feeling: that I'm okay, in the place I should be, or at least where it's okay for me to be, and I'm not doing anything particularly wrong.

The only thing that changes, is what circumstances trigger that sense of happiness.

I notice as I get older, I'm becoming more sensible and more career driven.
I dont think happiness will change for me ever. Its not like a contest that criteria for judging declines or heightens over time. Lol. Happiness is always in me and that's a choice. No matter what I do, I always look at the sunny side

Thank you Tom.