For a child, happiness has a magical nature. I remember making hide-outs in newly-cut hay, playing cops and robbers in the woods, getting a speaking part in the school play. Of course, kids also experience lows, but their delight at such peaks of pleasure as winning a race or getting a new bike is unreserved.

In the teenage years, the concept of happiness changes. Suddenly it’s conditional on such things as excitement, love, popularity and whether that zit will clear up before night. I can still feel the agony of not being invited to a party that almost everyone else was going to. But I also recall the ecstasy of being plucked from obscurity at another event to dance with a John Travolta look-alike.

【B1】_____________________________________

My dictionary defines happy as “lucky” or “fortunate”, but I think a better definition of happiness is “the capacity for enjoyment”. The more we can appreciate what we have, the happier we are. It’s easy to overlook the pleasure we get from loving and being loved, the company of friends, the freedom to live where we please, even good health.

【B2】_____________________________________

Later, peace descended again, and my husband and I enjoyed another pleasure—intimacy. Sometimes just the knowledge that he wants can bring me joy.

You never know where happiness will turn up next. When I asked friends what made them happy, some mentioned apparently insignificant moments. “I hate shopping,” one friend said, “but there’s a clerk who always chats and really cheers me up.”

【B3】_____________________________________

I get a thrill from driving. One day I stopped to let the school bus turn onto a side road. The driver grinned and gave me a thumbs-up sign. We were two allies in the world of mad motorists. It made me smile.

【B4】_____________________________________

Psychologists tell us that to be happy we need a mixture of enjoyable leisure time and satisfying work. I doubt that my great grandmother, who raised 14 children and took in washing, had none of either. She did have a network of close friends and families, and maybe this is what fulfilled her. If she was content with what she had, perhaps it was because she didn’t expect life to be very difficult.

【B5】_____________________________________

While happiness may be more complex for us, the solution is the same as ever. Happiness isn’t about what comes to us—it’s about how we perceive what comes to us. It’s the knack of finding a positive for every negative, and viewing a setback as a challenge. It’s not wishing for what we haven’t had, but enjoying what we do possess.

A. Another friend loves the telephone. “Every time it rings, I know someone is thinking about me.”
B. We all experience moments like these. Too few of us register them as happiness.
C. In adulthood the things that bring profound joy—birth, love, marriage—also bring responsibility and the risk of loss. Love may not last, sex isn’t always good, loved ones die. For adults, happiness is complicated.
D. We, on the other hand, with so many choices and such pressure to succeed in every area, have changed happiness into one more thing we “gotta have”. We are so self-conscious about our “right” to it that it’s making us miserable. So we chase it and equate it with wealth and success, without noticing that the people who have those things aren’t necessarily happier.
E. I added up my little moments of pleasure yesterday. First there was sheer bless when I shut the last lunchbox and had the house for myself. Then I spent an uninterrupted morning writing, which I love. When the kids came back home, I enjoyed their noise after the quiet of the whole day.