[imgabe]

"happy" seems like a temporary state. It's a reaction you have to an event. In base state without any input, you would be neither happy nor unhappy. Then something happens and if you like it you're happy about it for a while and if you don't like it you're unhappy about it for a while and then you go back to being neutral. It seems like the wrong question to ask to expect people to just walk around "happy" 24/7 for no reason.

Questions like this are basically just noise. If you ask someone whether they are happy with their life overall, it will depend on whatever most recently happened and how they feel about it. Being smart doesn't mean nothing unhappy is ever going to happen to you. You'll still fail at something, pets and loved ones will die, you'll get laid off or whatever.

[MarkLowenstein]

Enlightened take. For similar reasons I often say that going meta and fussing about your own happiness--literally basing your happiness on whether you are happy--is a doom spiral. If you're asking yourself "Am I happy?" I can give you the answer: No.