Happiness As The Absence Of Wanting

I had a very interesting conversation with the roommate yesterday. We were on our way to playing volleyball at the CAC and we managed to get onto the conversation of whether or not I was happy. it started off with him saying that he great plans for his life and that he was only no discovering what those were, but it was getting harder and harder to achieve it. Then he said to me that he believes I go through life not being happy. That because I am not pursuing to make myself happier that my life had problems. Hmmm....

This got me thinking about what it means to be happy. Personally my definition of happiness is to not want for anything. Everything else I pursue is for the challenge of it. It's fun for me to attempt things that seem nearly impossible for me. As I was trying to figure out how to say this August presented me with a question;

If you could do something now that could improve your happiness by 10% would you do it?

Couldn't help but hesitate for completely different reasons then he guessed. What popped in my head was if some thing or event could make me happier in my life. Of course there always the instantaneous happiness of being given something but something life changing is completely different. I don't really want for anything so I can't imagine being happier because I gained something. All that I can say is missing is people. Because of my nature there is a need for me to have people in my life. I have a great family, good friends, a safe job, and no money problems. Admittedly I could use a spouse and I've come around to having children but that is why I left a very well paying job to stick around one place.

My conclusion was that my train of thought is very different then most people I know. I don't have the drive and ambition my sister has to succeed nor the need to make my life have quality like my father and roommate. I simply want to not worry about anything, find the next challenge, and create something that was not there before. That's why I'm writing a book, learning to draw, pushing my friend to start his screen play, running a website dedicated to webcomics, writing a webcomic, and writing this blog. I have further plans for more books, other webcomics, learning the guitar, overcome tone deafness, and writing a video game.

Why? Because creating something which was not there is the ultimate challenge. What more is there to life then to find your own limitations and break them?