Everyday Canvas

Daily Life and Happiness

Prompt: "The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life." William Morris
Write anything you want about this this quote.

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Granted, the details of daily life add to, embellish, and enhance the evolutionary steps of the human journey. Granted, taking an interest in every little thing we do and doing it with gusto takes our attention away from the hardships of life.

I certainly agree to paying attention and taking a genuine interest in the details of daily life.

Yet, does this point to the true secret of happiness?

To begin with, I don’t think happiness is such a trifling thing. Yes, during the focusing of my attention on the mundane everyday things, I may be avoiding or covering up some suffering or negativity, but is this really happiness?

To me, happiness is something different. It is something much more complicated and very hard to define. In fact, I don’t think there’s a definition of happiness that is accepted worldwide. Just google “What is happiness?” and you’ll see what I mean. There are so many definitions and such conflicting ideas on what happiness is.

From this point of view, if we can’t even define happiness itself, how can we be sure of its true secret? And doesn’t this make William Morris’s quote a low-grade generalization?

Maybe during the nineteenth century, William Morris’s time, such generalizations involving large concepts were tolerable. I dare think and hope that in our century, we will try to look more closely into what makes us human.