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Love & Happiness in the Making

Note: This is the seventh article of a new series I'm writing titled In the Making. If you enjoyed this article be sure to check out the previous six articles and stay tuned for all future articles.

Introduction


This article isn’t about romantic love. Nor is it about sexual love. Love in this context isn’t about dating and relationships. This kind of love can be found with any individual you connect with well. The best definition of this love is the one explained by the VIA Character Strength: Valuing close relations with others, in particular those in which sharing & caring are reciprocated; being close to people.


This love is special to us in a different way to romantic love, this love is what gives us compassion and empathy, as well as allows us to understand the feelings of people we hold close to ourselves.


To top it all off, I will also dive into whether we can orchestrate happiness, or if it has come naturally to us. Without further ado, with context out of the way, why do we need love?

Why Do We Need Love?


Valuing the relationships we have with others is what makes us human, we are social beings, we enjoy being in the presence of our own kind. Holding people close to ourselves and valuing said relationships gives us a sense of belonging and warmth where it would otherwise be loneliness and distraught.


Without love we would be very lonely creatures with limited interactions and minimal social emotion. We would essentially be lifeless souls (much like Riley towards the end of Inside Out as well as 22 towards the end of Soul).


Love is essential towards our emotional wellbeing, social wellbeing and in some cases, even our physical wellbeing. The feeling of connection towards others we hold close helps us feel happier inside and outside, it also develops our social skills as well as diminishes social anxiety when interacting with others. Often, we like to dress up to look nicer to those whose opinions we care about, as such affecting our physical appearance and wellbeing. It encourages us to be healthier; working out and maintaining a healthy diet (more information in my article, Strength in the Making)

How is Love Developed?


How do we develop our love for others and further strengthen our connection with said others?

  1. Spend time with our loved ones - By spending time with those we hold close to our hearts, we are able to truly appreciate all that they do for us, physically and emotionally.

  2. View life more optimistically - Looking at life in general with a brighter view will boost our appreciation for others in our lives and the nice gestures they do to us.


Don’t know how to do that? Here’s a tip: try and give someone a compliment every day. Try to make it a different person each day. When you get good at it, give two compliments to two different people a day, then increase it to three, and then four, etc.


Another thing you could do is smile as you go through the day. Think about the good times that people have had with you and the good things that people have done for you and be grateful for all that has happened to you because of them.

Glass half full…

Can We Achieve Happiness?


Now for the second part of this article - happiness.


We all strive to be happy, but is there a formula for happiness? To be completely honest, you can’t achieve happiness on the basis of process. It has to come from you. We all have our own idea of what happiness is and how to achieve it, which means we can’t pinpoint an exact method on how to achieve said happiness.


For example, happiness to a man with cancer would most likely be cherishing every moment of life he has remaining, he would also be super happy if his cancer got cured. On the other hand, happiness to a woman who suffers from domestic violence from her husband would be the day that her husband stops abusing her, or the day that he’s reported and picked up by the police.


Happiness is subjective across a wide spectrum and is tailor made to each individual. No one event or outcome is applicable to everybody, even the outcome of winning the lottery (many cultures don’t follow the concept of money and as such would have no use for the fat cheque handed to them). As such, rather than trying to identify a universal formula to create happiness, each one of us individually must provide the positive emotion whenever we can. This is also why some people seem happy all the time or happier than others all the time. This is because they approach life with an optimistic attitude, allowing them to feel happy by default (tips on how to view life as such are above).


That being said, we can identify certain elements of happiness that increase the happiness emotion. Here are some universal concepts key to happiness.

  1. Triumph - Triumph or success usually makes us feel happier than without, this is because of the feeling of effort paying off as well as successfully defeating the challenge (if any). This triumph can be for big things such as winning a world war, or for small things such as successfully finding your house keys.

  2. Benefit - We feel happier when good things happen to us, or when we do/receive something that benefits us. This can come in the form of objects, places, ideas, concepts and/or people.

  3. Love - It all comes back to love. We feel a lot happier when we’re with people we hold close to ourselves, they often help us see the better side of life and also make you enjoy the moment more. (Especially in the time of a pandemic where it isn’t as easy to see people, spending time with those you love helps your emotional stability a lot and makes you feel a lot happier.)

Conclusion


Love and Happiness. Arguably the two most sought after qualities in human nature. This subject has been studied for a long time and after all this digging, it is still quite fascinating. What would I want you to take away from this? To be honest, not much. A lot of it is for you to discover on your own - what you enjoy and don’t, what happiness is to you, how you choose to develop love for others, who you hold close to yourself and who you don’t, etc. All I want to express is the importance of it all, and hopefully set you on the right path towards a better life and more stable wellbeing.


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