I recently finished watching the OVA Denpa Teki na Kanojo, coming straight off a link related to Rainbow from the weekly series I recently started. So naturally I thought this would, at most, be decent based off its relation with Rainbow. To my surprise it was really good, and I ended up watching both forty-ish minute videos in a day.
So without getting too off topic, there was a subject covered in the second episode, that I thought might be interesting to write about. This being the idea that happiness is a constant, and has to be stolen from someone in order to gain your own.
Faulty Logic
As a surface level observation, this may seem true; As an example, getting a job, that another person also applied for, looks like you took the happiness from someone and injected it into you. However, just tweaking the example a little bit, you will see the philosophy crumple under its weak logic. Lets say only two people applied for the same job, one of them gets it and the other get referred to another opening he is more suited for; It now seem like, the chunk of happiness is not only extracted, but also reappears back inside the victim.
Using that previous logic, we don't know where that new found happiness came from if there was a "happiness constant". Of course me disagreeing with this position, I would have my own hypothesis for a way to be happy, and the hint is in the title.
The Pursuit
The way I see happiness isn't new, since it is straight from The Declaration of Independence. Happiness needs to be pursued and it's not just something as black and white as stealing happiness, or as simple as choosing happiness. The choice falls more in the deciding to look for what really makes you happy, rather than it being a switch you turn on.
Reasoning Behind It
The reasons I have are quite simple, but a thing as moderately complicated as being happy, needs to be broken down into simple things. First being, you need to understand what it is that makes you happy. If you don't even understand the things you like of what make you happy, there's no way you will know what step are need to make yourself feel better or genuinely feeling happy.
Next is quite the opposite of the first claim of how to be happy, that is, everyone has a chance at being happy, you just have to look for it. It is what the founding father of the United States of America were talking about when they said, "...with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.".
The last reason being, that your state of mind, is up to you. Which is why it kind would say this is a derivative of "happiness is a choice", only where the choice is actively looking for the things that make you smile.
The only question left is, what really makes you happy?