Verified by 
A few of us on Twitter were batting around thoughts on how to define the elusive concept of happiness...but we couldn't seem to come to a conclusive definition. What happiness means to one person could be completely different from another. Perhaps it is too subjective to be directly observed, measured, agreed upon….or pursued. After all, how do you pursue something you can’t even define?
I recently read the Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study, a book on the findings from the longest study on longevity and well-being ever performed. The investigators followed over 200 men from their freshman year in college to their deaths. The author and study investigator, Dr. George Vaillant, sheds light on the findings via stories of the study participants. Without spoiling the book, the theme throughout was that fulfillment (or lack thereof) at one point in life is not necessarily one’s destiny. We ebb, flow, and evolve. Contentment is possible regardless of the road traveled thus far; it can be created, reinvented, or destroyed. Vaillant's data uncovered a few factors that seemed to tip the odds towards a contented life. In the book, men who were capable of accepting love that was offered to them (i.e., emotional intimacy), could cope with stress in healthy and productive ways (e.g., avoiding reliance on alcohol and other substances to cope with stress), managed to recoup losses from bad relationships by building new and better ones (e.g., impact from a bad childhood could be recovered by loving marriage and/or friendships), and seized their passions (e.g., fulfilling work or pasttime) were the men who thrived both emotionally and physically.
While reading the book, I decided to put the question “what is happiness?” to the Twitterverse. I tweeted the question more times than I can count and got a range of responses which are illustrated in the word cloud below. The parallels between the book and the word cloud are striking. As we each wrestle our way through life’s journey, maybe we really do have a sense of what happiness looks like, even if from time to time the true meaning manages to elude us...
