Progress-focused

Maya Tamir and her colleagues are doing interesting research on emotions. Emotions are not simply states that overwhelm us and that we are at the mercy of. Nor is it the case that by definition we always simply want to feel happy or good. The story is more complex. As humans, we appear to have emotion goals and we construct and are able to regulate emotions.

How important should we consider being happy? Should it be a general goal in our life to be happy? Or should it perhaps even be the ultimate goal we should have as a person? Must we see happiness as the main goal in many or all domains of our life, such as work and education? While happiness as a goal sounds quite important, perhaps we should not conclude too quickly that our life resolves or should revolve around happiness only. What happiness precisely is, how we achieve it, and to what extent we should focus on it, may harder to answer that you might think.