The happiness I might have had as a single person is epistemically inaccessible to me. While I might conjecture about the things that might have made me happy as a single person, those are only guesses. And as we all experience, many times the things we believe will render happiness often turn out to be bunk.

This to say that happiness, like truth, is so contextually entrenched that I’m fairly uncomfortable talking about it separate from that context. CK, I think your personal example speaks very plainly about what we would like to say (i.e. my happiness is not entirely indebted to my exact circumstances). However, I think the desire to think about one’s ‘happiness independent of my formation and history’ must be maintained with a sense of its artificial form of argument.

I may be reading your initial comments wrong, but you almost seem to expect some kind of universal value to be the recognized source of happiness independent of circumstance. If this is correct, then that would be entirely too Platonic for me. I think the answers given by your students affirm the body, the lived experience, and the centrality of experience to their own thinking and ‘feeling’.

Given this, I’m skeptical that one can have a cool separation from the formative factors of their current happiness and some ideal of happiness that could have happened despite their historical situation. Basically, I have no epistemic route into historically independent occasions to which my life might have wandered given different decisions, cohorts, etc.

So for now, I would not be willing to make the distinction that you make. Although I think it is good of you to point it out and obviously a good distinction through which to think (how’s that for not ending the sentence in a preposition)

This kind of a list exercise can’t get at the nuances involved, but I think that one can–and here I speak on my own behalf, really–be devoted to one’s wife, family, friends, and deeply indebted to how they shape you, for good or ill, and still maintain a sense of self that is apart from them. The reason “family” and “love” don’t appear at the top of my list for things I need to be happy is that I’ve learned to find happiness regardless of how others treat me, or my relationship with them (not in a blithe “I don’t care” sort of way, mind you).

And so, while I don’t think I am independent of others, I do think there’s a sense in which, as Hafidha points out, as you age, you learn to find a center that is not so deeply enmeshed in others, but without losing your other-focusedness.

At least that’s where I am at 29. Check with me when I’m 39 and have children to see if I find my words now to be “cute” and naive.

When I look back at my youth of independence, I used to naively think that I struck out on my own and forded my path to where I am. But after experiencing the intricacies of familial relationships and social fabric in general, I now naively realize that there was a very large social mesh that allowed me to ‘pretend’ like I was independent.

I look at the 20-somethings (who I counsel and work with) and get the ‘isn’t it cute’ feeling when I see them trying to will themselves to believe that they act, feel and think independently of their family relationships and society at large (even if they are completely devoid of family relationships). It’s the same feeling I get when my youngest daughter (2 years old) refuses to hold our hand and intentionally walks two paces away when in public. It’s very cute when they’re two.

It’ll be interesting to see how their values change as they age. (Though as they are typical college students, I did hear one person say “beer” while working through the exercise!)

1. family
2. love

After a little thought - and almost putting down food - I added

3. confidence
4. language (the means to express and communicate)

Then, after much more thought, I added

5. food

I didn’t add shelter because I figured with family and love I’d have somewhere to go. Food I added because well, right now, food is just so important to me. Love can keep your warm at night, but it can’t fill a belly.

I’m 31, but it sounds like I’m fitting in more with your students. Except that I could never imagine putting down cell phone. Then again, I remember life long before cell phones and in-home internet access. They’re a big part of my life, but absent from most of my fondest memories.

Obviously, those things are very important to me, too–but I don’t know that they’d be the first things I would say if asked that question. “Freedom” would probably be top.