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Perfect bliss – the Garden of Eden - Nirvana - Heaven – Shangri-La - Camelot; humans have always fantasized about a place or state of being where the impossible experience of perfect happiness can be found.  But why is it impossible?  The answer can be found in the fact that happiness is not just one thing, and that there are in fact different types of happiness that are in direct opposition to each other.  Having too much of one destroys the ability to have enough of the other, and if “perfect” happiness means that we have a great deal of all of them, then we are doomed to fall short of the perfect happiness that we seek.

Jennifer Hecht is a philosopher and historian, and she has studied the history of happiness.  In her book, The Happiness Myth (HarperOne Press, 2007), Hecht explores what it has meant to be happy at different times and places throughout human history.  In the process of doing so, she has developed a scheme for thinking about happiness that I personally find quite useful.  In short, she proposes that we can experience three different types of happiness and that they are antagonistic to each other.  Pursuing any one of them too relentlessly automatically takes you farther away from the others.  The three types of happiness that she describes are as follows:

“A Good Day – A good day can be filled with mild pleasures, repeatable and forgettable” (Hecht, 2007, p. 10). Think of pleasant days spent with good friends, moments in beautiful places, or being engrossed in a good movie.  Think of days when you are not hard at work and nothing bad is happening.  In short, you are feeling upbeat and are having a good day, but it is a day that is unspectacular and unlikely to be remembered a few weeks after it has occurred.

“Euphoria – Euphoria is intense, lasts powerfully in memory, and often involves risk or vulnerability”  (Hecht, 2007, p. 10).  Think of amazing emotional experiences fueled by drugs, alcohol, or sexual passion.  Think of death defying adrenalin rushes, illicit love affairs, and incredible episodes of hedonistic pleasure.

A Happy Life – A happy life requires a lot of difficult work, which seriously compromises your ability to experience euphoria or very many good days.  Think of a good marriage or the quiet satisfaction that comes from having consistently performed well in a demanding career; think about the pleasure one experiences while reflecting upon the fact that one’s children have developed into successful, well-adjusted adults.  The happy life is something that unfolds over a long period of time and it requires that one has not spent too much time in the pursuit of euphoric pleasure or whiling away too much of one’s life as a slacker, piling up one “good day” after another.  Keeping your nose to the grindstone in pursuit of the happy life demands that you cut down on the frequency of your euphoric experiences and your "good days."  Similarly, a single-minded pursuit of euphoria (think drug addiction) will undermine your relationships and career, derailing any chance that you might have at a happy life.

Understanding that happiness is not just one thing, and understanding that it is not possible to have all types of happiness in great quantities can help you to enjoy whatever type of happiness your life has provided. Appreciate a happy life for what it is, and stop worrying that you are missing all the fun.  Recognizing that no one else “has it all” either can cut down on one thing certain to deny happiness - envy.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-ooze/201503/why-cant-we-be-perfectly-happy