Happiness -- its true value and the right means of achieving it -- has been pondered by many people including Plato and Socrates, Stoics, church fathers and Aristotelians. Philosophers have had different arguments including that happiness is a matter of: faith, passion, reason, pleasure and/or contentment, mind and/or body. Some of them have also argued that happiness is a way of being or feeling. Who is happy?

Who are the people who are happy? Does being happy depend on one's age, race or sex? Does wealth contribute to happiness? Does happiness come from a particular trait or job, friends, age or income-level? With a spiritual dimension? With an active faith or with close supportive relationships? (Myers, 56)

Happy people are usually those who feel that they are in control of their lives. Those with little or no control over their lives such as citizens of undemocratic countries, very poor people, nursing home patients and prisoners suffer from lower morale. They also have worse health than those who are happy. Happy people are also often optimistic people.

In recognition of the fact that the majority of the people are reasonably happy, researchers are now trying to find: Who is the happiest? Does happiness favour people with a particular race, gender or age? Does one have to have a particular job/income level or traits to be happy? (Myers, 58) If conditions of happiness is equally available to people of any race, gender income-level or age, then who is the happiest? Through the difficulties of life, some people's capacity to be happy is not diminished. In fact in was found that the people who were happiest in 1973 were still comparatively happy ten years later, despite changes in their family status, residence or work.

Happiness and the level realizable

The human mind with is capacity to create, plan, analyze and...

However, in spite of the changes, the mind did not evolve to make us feel happy, have more humour or to make us write love poems and tell people we love them. The mind evolved for a more serious purpose to make us survive in a dangerous world. The mind became more skilled at foreseeing and avoiding threats with each passing generation. The mind became more skilled at analyzing everything and judging whether it was: Good or bad? Helpful or harmful? Safe or dangerous? Such situations include; embarrassing ourselves in public, not having the money to pay bills, getting speed tickets, rejection, upsetting the people we care for, losing our jobs, getting terminal diseases, or any other of the thousands of situations that fill us with worry. Consequently, we spend a significant amount of time worrying about things that, most of the time, will not occur.
Psychological evaluations of well-being supplement the determinants of material and physical well-being with the evaluations of subjective well-being. The indicators of happiness do change with one's age, for instance one's satisfaction with health and social relations become more significant in older age. Emotional terrain also greatly varies with age (teenagers, unlike adults often have changes in moods in less than sixty minutes. In terms of gender, females are doubly more vulnerable than males to displaying their anxiety or depression, while men are five times more vulnerable than women to cases of antisocial personality disorder and alcoholism. More intense sadness in women particularly in bad circumstances must be viewed in light of their bigger capacity for happiness under good circumstances. Even though women report slightly more happiness than men in cases where positive emotions are evaluated, the net result…