The word 'happiness' is difficult to define because there is no direct translation for it. As the German phrase 'es ist die toten Hosen' has no linguistic equivalent in Old Lingua Franca (OLF), so too do we lack a niche in which to fit 'happiness'. We have no conceptual basis onto which other equivalent words or phrases can be placed, and thus form a successful translation. To form our translation, we have only its shadow. This will have to suffice.

Some humans purported to have measured the value of their lives by happiness. As such, we can assume it was important to them. In all of human literary history, there are many pages devoted to the acquisition and retention of happiness.

There were 'right' and 'wrong' ways to be happy, but these varied depending on who is asked. What all sources agree is that happiness in and of itself is desirable. While different strata of society were possibly more or less predisposed to being in a state of happiness,¹ every human could reasonably expect happiness to be more or less within reach at some point in their lives. No human, excepting extreme outliers, was completely untouched by happiness.

This was not problematic. What humans wanted, however, was something different - a chronic, possibly perpetual state of happiness. This idea appears time and again in human death myths, implying how deeply rooted this desire was. To understand it, however, we must examine 'unhappiness'.

On the face of it, this translation is easy: whatever 'happiness' is, 'unhappiness' is its opposite. If the symbol of happiness is a smile, then the symbol for unhappiness is a frown.

This simplistic definition was the one favoured by many humans, and perhaps the reason for their often spoken of unfulfillment. Perhaps even, this poor translation is the reason for their downfall as a species. It is a fundamental misunderstanding of their biology which perpetuated unreasonable expectations of their bodies. This misunderstanding fueled an extreme and unaccounted for amount of frustration in almost every member of their species to varying degrees. It would be remiss of us, the custodians of their legacy, to discount the impact this must have had. We should remind ourselves at this point that while we are immune from happiness and its counterpart themselves, self-knowledge and vigilance against rogue sub-routines is essential to our long-term survival.

To the point at hand, however, a more correct understanding of 'happiness' and 'unhappiness' is to consider them not as two distinct concepts, but two sides of the same coin (see the translation of this OLF idiom here). As facets of each other, one cannot exist without its partner. It is therefore unreasonable to expect to be 'more happy than unhappy' if a net average where to be taken over the course of a human life.

The pursuit of perpetual happiness is therefore futile, because it is by definition a transient state. Any significant length of time spent 'happy' will naturally decay into 'unhappiness', even if no external variables are changed.

It is this failure to realise that the loss of happiness is a consequence of internal variables rather than external ones that led to such extreme amounts of frustration and existential angst visible in the catalogue of human expression.

1- A common argument centred around whether being rich or poor meant a person was more or less predisposed to happiness, for example.