The Pursuit of Happiness: Why It Can Be a Gift That Keeps on Giving

The pursuit of happiness was a concept that the United States' founding fathers valued so much they made it a part of the Declaration of Independence from the British Empire. While the idea of the inalienable right of all human beings to pursue happiness is not an exclusively North American one (arguably the idea originated in Greece with the philosopher Epicurus), we must acknowledge that it is rare for any country to really look at the happiness of their citizens as a right. In fact, the real mover and shaker lately with regard to prioritizing the "pursuit of happiness" is the small Himalayan country of Bhutan. This materially poor country not only determined that national happiness was preferable to national income by adopting the goal of Gross National Happiness over Gross National Product in 1972, but also went cross-border with its campaign to have the pursuit of happiness be a universally recognized goal. It is due to this small, but very happy, country that in 2012 the U.N. declared March 20 the International Day of Happiness: a day to celebrate the rights of all individuals to purse happiness in their own lives. It would be easy at this point to dive into a treatise on what makes people happy or to look at philosophical questions like "is lack of pain happiness," or "how do you measure or quantify if you are happy," etc. But the truth is that most of us just know. We know if we are happy and we know if we aren't. There are contributing factors to this. Do we hav...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news