What is this thing called “Happiness”?

Something’s been bugging me lately, though I’m not exactly sure what it is.  Maybe I got it from watching this news clip on TV a few days ago about a new class at Harvard on “Happiness”.  One student interviewed said that before taking the class, she was preparing for a career in law.  However, after taking the course, she realized she wants to do clinical psychology because helping others is important to her and plus she’s good at it.  

As for my situation, I believe I’m just going with the motions and one of my principal fears is that one day I’ll wake up and realize I just wasted a good chunk of my life on something that I really don’t care about.  I don’t like the idea of having to BS my application essays and interviews (hopefully, my poker face will carry over…) or fulfilling other people’s expectations of me (let’s face it, for most of us, other people’s expectations often become one’s own).  It’s like living a big lie.  

So what’s important to me, then?  Is it power/prestige/authority?  Probably not.   No, because I know that with more power and prestige, a lot of phony people will try to befriend you.  You might even get more date prospects….The end result is that either you’ll fool yourself into believing that it’s because people genuinely like you for who you are (which is why they act the way they do), or become cynical/distrustful of others.  You’ll start overanalyzing people’s behavior–trying to figure out their true intentions.  You might be right  99 times out of 100, but maybe that one time you struck out on, may have been a potential true comrade/friend/etc.  Sometimes you wish that your read on people is incorrect, but when you start sensing that it’s pretty accurate, it can be quite disconcerting.