Happiness is an inescapable reality, since man’s basic aim in life is truth and happiness. Many have resorted to thinking that the essence of life is only through the attainment of this phenomenon. Being religious or not, man’s intentionality is an intentionality of happiness; his consciousness is a consciousness of joy, excitement, gladness etc; this all boil down to the reality of truth. But, it is inevitable that in its uniqueness, happiness varies in many forms. Human experience is an experience of happiness and could only be understood in the context of the individual. Ironic it may seem, some resort to negative means to attain such beatitude. Buddhists cling to suffering to attain such perfection. Christians need suffering as mode to man’s salvation or everlasting happiness. Existentialists like Jaspers and Kierkegaard posited their philosophies with a certain hope of liberation. Man, in all of his endeavor, has an awareness of a form of reward or liberation, and this is what makes their life meaningful. Accordingly,

 The individual then could not help but be a part of the experience. Human freedom is always directed towards a meaningful departure or meaning and its happiness is its aim. Man’s meaning then is a happy meaning.

 Given such case, what makes a person really happy then? In order to understand the significance of this endeavor, I find the need to discuss some important conceptions or modalities of happiness. Let this be expressed that this is only an attempt to unravel the meaning of happiness. It does not introduce a new moral guide or pattern. This paper is simply a product of a subtle phenomenological reflection.

 Of all the forms of happiness, human beings are aware that contentment best describe the experience. Human awareness, in its concreteness is always directed to satisfaction. Evidently, a man becomes contented when he knows how to pursue a peaceful existence by knowing how to accommodate oneself to any particular state of affairs. The contented man lives in accordance with the social, political and the economic boundaries of time. To such notion, man’s contentment is hereby a product of herd-mentality, mediocrity; a form of pleasure seeking carefully being kept within bounds, a preference for the comfortable life and other forms of societal determinations. To live in this state is to be dissolved in a system of folly. Kierkegaard spoke:

 Now, it is clear that such form of confinement if imposed by another or by the social cannot be a source of happiness. Only a man, who knows his limitations in intellectual, social, societal and cultural matters, and therefore measures his behavior according to that knowledge, will obviously share the contentment, which makes a man happy. Man will then not talk of something outside the range of his mental horizons, since he knows that one has to confine his thinking within this limit. Therefore, humility as a form of satisfaction grows out of his being discriminated, being limited.

 The next form of happiness is when one sees such as a form of liberation.¹ This normally happens when he inculcates into his mind the notion that with respect to the worldly situations, happiness must be transcendent.² The ultimate perfection of human existence cannot be found in this world. If humans are linked within a chain of actions (which is the case), then genuine happiness cannot be linked within this chain. That is, since the here is only giving us contentment, genuine happiness could only be derived from the not here.

 This only poses that essence could only be grasped negatively. They give us no explanation as to how it happens that pleasure, joy, happiness, however one may judge them from a moral and religious standpoint –are possible in this world. The fact is that our imperfect human experience of happiness forms the only definite point of exodus for all such judgments. That this concept of happiness gives us insecurity more than plenitude.

 Another is when one sees happiness as a form of ecstasy.³ Here, happiness in its sense is attained through the experience of certain infinity" But it is obvious that in this infinite grasp, humans are now qualifying infinity as a product of their own concreteness. It rather signifies that humans are not really dealing with formal or abstract notion, but merely a conceptual infinity; though rich in content remains as a lack. They also find rapture here, since a finite being cannot experience the concrete in finite realities except by being swept away. The object of the experience is so constituted that it overwhelms the individual subject through its richness. The subject then is compelled to such immersion, become enraptured then carried away.

 With the following contentions given, one could not help but see man’s common notion of happiness as essentially meaningless. A form of happiness, which instead of dealing with the essential thing, human mind then, is forced to mediocrity. This lack could only be filled with a new and essential conception of happiness.

 The problem with the modalities of happiness being mentioned earlier is that they inhibited a form of insecurity more than completeness. In the phenomenological sense, contentment, ecstasy and deliverance are only in the primary or empirical level of consciousness only. This level can never be considered revealing and significant since it varies and is therefore subjective. The difficulty here is that the essentials of happiness have not been addressed. The subject and the object i.e., the one who experiences pleasure and its object, the pleasurable have not been united. Contentment does not really deal with the phenomenon of happiness; it even prolongs the longing for unity. .

 Religious fanatics likewise, who sees happiness as a form of surrender to the eternal bliss, has remained in such scheme. In his hopelessness, he has extinguished consciousness of the world and of himself.

  The mystified believer best describes the experience as rapture like the first two modalities of happiness; the enraptured man in his essence has belittled his own subjectivity. The man who formerly is so proud and self-confident becomes very much preoccupied within his own boundary. He experiences the smallness and meaninglessness of his individuality. Though his longing for infinitude is undeniable, his existence has been swept away due to this subjective belittlement. In my analysis the bewildered man does not only linger on the primary level consciousness level but he sees his existence as an end due to his subjective nihilism.

  As mentioned earlier, happiness is an empirical reality. Happiness is possible because it is actual; it is actual because we experience it. It becomes an experience when we foretaste a concrete infinitude of meaning and value. It is true that our experience of this infinitude is contradictory; but to recognize a contradiction is already to guess that there is an elimination of the contradiction. Certainly, our experience of happiness is insufficient, but one would not feel this lack if he is not aware "somehow" of a genuine or perfect happiness.

 It is undeniable that we can know happiness only in its fleeting forms. Even so, that which we feel in its essence must be genuine or perfect. Here we see the value of the highest happiness as expressed by St. Thomas Aquinas. Accordingly, "perfect happiness could never be recognized as existing if we do not possess an intimate though implicit or inadequate, intuition of happiness"(Summa Theologiae). What is noteworthy in this consideration is that this intimacy is a manifestation of man’s third level of consciousness. Consciousness is never wrapped up in itself and an awareness of man’s empirical limitation only suggests a forecast of existence of a perfect or genuine happiness, a transcendental forecast (Merleau-Ponty, 1962). Readers may see here a form of unity between consciousness and the untamed notion of genuine happiness.

 Unlike the other modalities of consciousness, this form of meaningful assent best describes the true phenomenon of happiness. In its endeavor, the identity of both the subject (the happy man) and true happiness remain undiluted. The basic notions of joy, contentment, rapture and liberation are what can be considered as limiting situations in existential terms. In the terms used by Jaspers and Kierkegaard, they are symbols for man’s longing for the infinite. They serve as classical position for man’s journey toward the unknown. What is quite disappointing here is that man, in his awaiting sees his journey in its finality. And for this reason, more it becomes disappointing than anything.

 Accordingly, happiness is openness. It is always a mode of existing which places oneself outside oneself. A happy man does not find himself in a state of alienation that has to be overcome; the perceiving consciousness is never perfectly with itself. Rather, in his attempt to be happy, he must not be contented with what is at hand; he must go beyond his own experience. This is what I could refer to as an awaiting, a transcending anticipation.⁴