Rachel, how can I let two women carry my luggages, unless they are my servants....anyway, this is out of the question.

The word I have chosen for H is Happiness, I would hope that everyone can find happiness within their life.

Happiness

Happiness is an emotional or affective state that is characterized by feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction. As a state and a subject, it has been pursued and commented on extensively throughout world history. This reflects the universal importance that humans place on happiness.

In the Nicomachean Ethics, written in 350 B.C.E., Aristotle stated that happiness is the only thing that humans desire for its own sake. He observed that men sought riches not for the sake of being rich, but to be happy. And those who sought fame desired it not to be famous, but because they believed fame would bring them happiness. Aristotle argued that humans seek everything else; power, pleasure, love, honor, etc.; for the sake of happiness.

Considerations of happiness are essential to much ethical discussion. Many ethicists make arguments for how humans should behave, either individually or collectively, based on the resulting happiness of such behavior. Utilitarians, such as John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, advocated the greatest happiness principle as a guide for ethical behavior.

States associated with happiness include well being, delight, health, safety, contentment, and love. Contrasting states include suffering, depression, grief, anxiety, and pain. Happiness is often associated with the presence of favorable circumstances such as a supportive family life, a loving marriage, and economic stability. Unfavorable circumstances such as abusive relationships, accidents, loss of employment, and conflicts diminish the amount of happiness a person experiences. However, according to several ancient and modern thinkers, happiness is influenced by the attitude and perspective taken on such circumstances.

Societal theories of happiness

Societies, religions, and individuals have various views on the nature of happiness and how to pursue it. Western society takes its concept of happiness, at least in part, from the Greek concept of Eudaimonia [citation needed]. Eudaimonia(Greek: εὐδαιμονία) is a classical Greek word commonly translated as 'happiness'. Etymologically, it consists of the word "eu" ("good" or "well being") and "daimōn" ("spirit" or "minor deity", used by extension to mean one's lot or fortune).

For Americans, the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American dream, which can be seen as the idea that any goal can be attained through sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege notwithstanding [citation needed]. While many artists, writers, scholars, and religious leaders can and do consider their work to fall within the American dream, it is usually thought of as relating to financial success [citation needed]. Writers such as Horatio Alger promoted this idea, and many writers, such as Arthur Miller, criticized it [citation needed].

In developing nations factors such as hunger, disease, crime, corruption, and warfare can decrease happiness [citation needed].

Psychological view

Positive psychology

Martin Seligman in his book Authentic Happiness gives the positive psychology definition of happiness as consisting of both positive emotions (like comfort) and positive activities (like absorption). He presents three categories of positive emotions:

• past: feelings of satisfaction, contentment, pride, and serenity.
• present (examples): enjoying the taste of food, glee at listening to music, absorption in reading, and company of people you like e.g. friends and family.
• future: feelings of optimism, hope, trust, faith, and confidence.

There are three categories of present positive emotions:
• bodily pleasures, e.g. feeling the nirvana of sex.
• higher pleasures, e.g. absorbing oneself in activities all-altruistic.
• gratifications, e.g. absorption in reading.

The bodily and higher pleasures are "pleasures of the moment" and usually involve some external stimulus. An exception is the glee felt at having an original thought.
Gratifications involve full engagement, flow, elimination of self-consciousness, and blocking of felt emotions. But when a gratification comes to an end then positive emotions will be felt. Gratifications can be obtained or increased by developing signature strengths and virtues. Authenticity is the derivation of gratification and positive emotions from exercising signature strengths. The good life comes from using signature strengths to obtain abundant gratification in, for example, enjoying work and pursuing a meaningful life.

An important stipulation is that Martin Seligman's definition of happiness is one among many in the field of Positive Psychology

Mechanistic view

Biological basis

While a person's overall happiness is not objectively measurable, this does not mean it does not have a real physiological component. The neurotransmitter dopamine, perhaps especially in the mesolimbic pathway projecting from the midbrain to structures such as the nucleus accumbens, is involved in desire and seems often related to pleasure. Pleasure can be induced artificially with drugs, perhaps most directly with opiates such as morphine, with activity on mu-opioid receptors. There are neural opioid systems that make and release the brain's own opioids, active at these receptors. Mu-opioid neural systems are complexly interrelated with the mesolimbic dopamine system. New science, using genetically altered mice, including ones deficient in dopamine or in mu-opioid receptors, is beginning to tease apart the functions of dopamine and mu-opioid systems, which some scientists (e.g., Kent C. Berridge) think are more directly related to happiness. Stefan Klein in his book "The Science of Happiness" links these biological foundations of happiness to the concepts and findings of Positive Psychology and Social Psychology.

Books such as Listening to Prozac as well as published research on oral contraceptives with drospirenone like Yasmin(tm) support the idea that happiness may be lifted above normal levels with medication. This elevation differs from the sudden high of street drugs.

Those who use nootropics are making an effort to function above their normal cognitive capacity or emotional capacity.

Difficulties in defining internal experiences

It is probably impossible to objectively define happiness as humans know and understand it, as internal experiences are subjective by nature. Because of this, explaining happiness as experienced by one individual is as pointless as trying to define the color green such that a completely color blind person could understand the experience of seeing green. While one can not objectively express the difference between greenness and redness, it is possible to explain the physical phenomena that cause green to be observed, the capacities of the human visual system to distinguish between light of different wavelengths, and so on. Likewise, the following sections do not attempt to describe the internal sensation of happiness, but instead concentrate on defining its logical basis. It is therefore important to avoid circular definitions -- for instance, defining happiness as "a good feeling", while "good" is defined as being "something which causes happiness".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happiness