I don’t believe that one can actually define happiness or how it can be observed or measured because it is an abstract, socially created concept whose meaning may vary by individual due to its plasticity to experience (and also because it cannot be known how it was originally apprehended by the individual).That being said, I will do my best to define it within the realm of subjectivity and try to standardize the definition to account for as much of the variation as possible.
For one to be considered “happy”, they must report that they are happy. Outside evaluation (note that I’m considering “evaluation” to be distinct from observation) offers the added subjectivity of the evaluator’s lens, which should should always be avoided.
A given person’s happiness may not be definitively quantified in any sort of way (whether that quantification method be (number of satisfied desires/number of desires) or (average frequency of moral acts per day)). While this is the case, one can apply these methods with slight modification to a group of people to get an idea of how happy they are within the realm of the measurement method, and then make comparisons using these scores, still within this realm (this compares how happy individuals are at a given time). The variance of reported happiness between individuals of the same score within a realm of measurement is due to a constant that is specific to the individual (these can be used to compare how “happy” a person is; a higher constant means that it takes less to make them happier relative to the rest of the group).
The happiest time of my life was the night my current girlfriend (since November 2011) asked me out and the days following. est time of my life was the night est time of my life was the night