Have you ever even met a really happy person?

I'm genuinely suprised that so many consider themselves and those around them as 'really happy'.

I'm finding this hard to believe, again, considering that you've admitted to not having friends and avoiding unnecessary contact with people. Yeah, people air their life's grievances at work. That doesn't mean they're not happy overall.

Actually, I'm finding all of this hard to believe, and I'm bored of it, so I'm going to go clean.

You're right that I don't know. I can only go on what they say, their life circumstance and how they act (moaning, crying, complaining etc). And they strike me as having lives full of problems, and acting like they aren't 'really happy' at all.

I don't know why you find it hard to believe any of this ... That just points to different life experiences.

But before you go, I'm curious as to what these 'meaningful challenges' you mentioned are?

That's very personal, and you haven't given me any indication that I would find something meaningful out of such a conversation with you.

Maybe I'll open that line of dialogue to the rest of the forum sometime, and feel free to participate, but I have no interest in discussing it here.

Oh, I didn't realise these meaningful challenges had to be uniquely tailored for each individual, I thought they were more generic. No matter.

I can't imagine any challenge that would fit me so as to be meaningful, nor boring, and not involve suffering.

Just because people have challenges, it doesn’t mean they are unhappy. Challenges could be temporary setbacks or you could find happiness and contentment in overcoming challenges.

It’s possible that you’ve never met happy people because you don’t know them on deep level as you don’t have close friends. You simply don’t know enough people not on superficial level to determine that everyone is unhappy. The fact that you don’t know happy people, doesn’t mean that there are no happy people. Just that you don’t know any.

I think it’s impossible to find anyone on the planet that is 100% happy ALL. THE. TIME.

We all have struggles whether a person has MI or not. It’s just part of life, one day it’s sunny another day it’s raining.

I personally don’t like the word “ happy” I prefer “content”

If you want a glimpse of pure happiness give a 4 year old a box they can climb in and play. They are truly living the moment.

Chasing this elusive “happiness 24/7 “ is only going to be upsetting to you.

This is fair enough. I agree that just because I don't know any happy people it doesn't mean that there aren't any.

But it does suggest that the number may be quite small. That unhappy people seem to significantly outnumber happy ones.

Well, I don't know any content people either ... Everyone wants to have at least something get better for them, no one seems content where they are or with what they have.

Good point. OP mentioned in his first post though that he thinks contentment is also an illusion same as happiness. Word content is a good one though.

Generally speaking whatever people encounter in their life or whatever they are exposed to often shapes their view of the world. Not everyone operates this way. But many people tend to generalize. For example people in unhappy marriages often claim that happy marriages don’t exist. It’s simply untrue. People who were cheated on sometimes argue that everyone is a cheater. People who had bad hospital experience believe that all hospitals are evil.

Although some generalizations are necessary in understand the world, most generalizations are completely counterproductive.