Pursuit of happiness ...

How different is your happiness from mine?

What makes you happy may not do the same to me. What erodes you of your happiness may not have the same effect on me. This tends to give an idea that happiness is relative.

But is that really true?

I think not. Mostly human beings can only experience happiness in more or less the same way. Happiness as an emotion that people can experience is not relative. It rather probably has an absolute measure.

Consider this. When someone is most happy, there is not really a way for you to feel more happier than her by employing how many ever of the different devices at your disposal. So, there are probably different levels of happiness that you can experience, leading to this level of most happiness and unless your genetic wiring is not significantly different from other human beings, the happiness that you can experience at each level is more or less the same as others.

What really differs is what can make your happiness go up these levels. Some need to employ a lot of resources to achieve a particular level of happiness. But for some, seemingly simple things are able to push their mind up the happiness levels.

Now from simple economic principles, isn't employing fewer resources to achieve the same payback more efficient? ;-)

Then there is the question of sustaining happiness ... :-)