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Wednesday, 06 August 2008 |
Speaker Whitney Edwards explores the topic of
‘what happiness is’ at Brown Bag Lunch Series
By JAMIE HENNEMAN
S-E Staff Reporter
In a two-part series on what happiness is and is not, Ste¬vens County Rural Library District librarian and avid philosopher Whitney Edwards lead a discussion on “happi¬ness.”
The discussion wrapped up the Brown Bag lunch series at the Colville Public Library July 30.
Edwards, the daughter of a philosophy professor who holds a Master’s Degree in Philosophy, noted that phi¬losophy has to “be applied to be worth anything” and started by discussing the definition of happiness.
“Happiness is commonly talked about in two different ways that fall into the cate¬gory of being really emotion¬ally happy, or euphoric, and being happy over the long time, which could be defined by a word called eudaemonia,” she said. “Eudaemonia is a Greek word that means hav¬ing a good demon or being blessed with well being and contentment.”
To determine what evokes either “euphoria” or “eudae¬monia” in people, Edwards showed a film from a 1994 episode of the Dateline TV journalism show (available for check out by library district patrons, she noted) that pur¬sued the topic. At the end of the film, attendees to the Brown Bag lunch determined that happiness was not the product of money, fame or thrills as commonly attrib¬uted.
The show suggested that happiness is also partly de¬termined by biology or your predetermined genetic ten¬dency towards being happy.
“It is interesting to note that science is telling us that we all have a varied tendency to¬wards being happy, but that much of it is in our control,” Edwards said.
The part that Edwards and the show noted that was in the control of everyone was choosing to have optimism, faith and meaningful relation¬ships.
“In this film, we have seen lottery winners who were very unhappy and former prisoners of war who were optimistic and positive, despite their cir¬cumstances,” Edwards said. “And what the studies are showing us is that happiness cannot be bought, but it is linked to our decisions to have a sense of purpose and be in¬volved in our communities.”
Or, as the Dateline show put it, “The way to be happy is to get up out of your chair and start acting like the person you want to be.”
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 13 August 2008 )
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