Three Versions of Happiness

From prolix

Can Happiness Be Bad for Your Health?

• You finally got the thing you wanted. So why does part of you feel worse, not better?
• Positive experiences are not psychologically positive for everyone.
• Research suggests that good fortune may be associated with poorer health among people with low self-esteem.
• Experiences that contradict our self-image can themselves become psychologically unsettling.

To pithy

“What would you call the highest happiness, Lewie?” he asked.

“The sense of competence,” was the answer, given without hesitation.

John Buchan - The Half-Hearted (1900)

To pragmatic

Only the fool and the very young expect happiness. The wise merely hope to be interested, at least not to be bored, in their passage through this world.

Arnold Bennett - Sacred and Profane Love (1905)