The Secret of Happiness

Someone says that it does not exist, someone else that it is a chimera. Gandhi said that “happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony,” while, in psychology, it is frequently described as a state of emotional well-being that a person experiences either in a narrow sense, when good things happen in a specific moment, or more broadly, as a positive evaluation of one’s life and accomplishments overall — that is, subjective well-being.

Happiness can be distinguished both from negative emotions — such as sadness, fear, and anger — and also from other positive emotions — such as affection, excitement, and interest. This emotion often co-occurs with a specific facial expression: the smile.

Anyway, the truth is probably that everyone has their own personal idea of happiness, their own moment that approaches and runs away. A secret, a state of mind, something that you cannot explain otherwise. And it is from this inexplicability that Egor Kraft, from Berliner Meta Work, draws inspiration for his Public Poster Project, to talk about a feeling that is there, available to everyone, but which very few seem to pay attention to — sometimes even detesting it as one of the most childish moods to show.

“Imagine you saw a colour in your dream,” Egor wrote, “which you have never seen before. It doesn’t consist of any colours or shades that you know. Trying to describe that colour would be as difficult as trying to believe that there is enough love and compassion in the world so every human can feel happiness.”