Definition and Categorization

Literature and Language
11 October 2011
Definition And Categorization
In her poem “The meaning of Happiness”, Pauline Oliver wrote:
As I pondered the meaning of happinessI sat and thought awhileThe outwards signs are clear enoughSparkling eyes and a beaming smile
And inwardly how can one tellOr gauge this emotion intactFor it blends with many othersTo me that is a fact
Joy, Pleasure and EcstasyAs friends together bandDifficult to separateFor they go hand in hand. (quoted in  HYPERLINK "" )
After reading the snippet of this beautiful poem, I closed the book and started thinking to myself “What is the meaning of happiness for me”. To my surprise, I was clueless.
Being awe-struck made me realize I had to think more clearly about this, so I grabbed a pen and a notebook and started jotting down everything that defined happiness for me – in the truest sense.
The first thing that came to my mind when I thought about defining happiness was the people that were close to me. My mom, my dad and my best friend – they all made up my fecund childhood memories and my tomorrow’s. I can’t imagine going through life without any of them. Beaming mornings of my first day at school with my dad holding my hand till I absolutely had to let go, the delicious macaroni and cheese my mom made with me on weekends, my best friend and I romping in backyard, clambering orange trees all made moments for me, moments I can think back to whenever I needed to smile, moments that made me ‘happy’ and I get to revisit them in my mind whenever I wanted. I put a big star against this point because this is something I had to hold on to no matter where I am. Starting tomorrow, I vowed to myself that whenever I get lost in the rush of life, I’d look up this and crawl back to these people to root myself back onto the ground. Wherever I go, whatever I feel I need to remember my epitome of happiness constitute these people and they are the ones who I need to reach out to and appreciate existence of.
Moving on to the next item of defining happiness, I put down ‘passion’. Passion to love, passion to feel, to appreciate beauty, to enjoy and to devour in everything great. Too much of today’s life was depended on obscure obsessions – obsessions that sucked the life out of you and made you rush. Obsession with dollars, obsession with bling-bling cars, with pearl gold-plated neck pieces, with anorexia, with label clothes - they were all superficial. I was talking about the passion to enjoy a simple cup of coffee in the morning, the passion to love your work, passion to appreciate off the subway random graffiti art, passion to care for others, passion to empathize, passion to be earthbound, passion to enjoy the fearless motion of the sea, the whispering music of leaves and the cool misty breeze in your hair. Just taking out moments in your time and deadline bounded life to actually enjoy – that constituted passion.
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