"Happiness is a choice." Agree or disagree?

I agree.

My therapist told me this years ago when I was suffering from very bad depression.

I agree.

I think you can make a choice to be happy but sometimes life throw you alot of curve balls and you dont always get to be happy threw them ya know?

Indecisive.

Or more like-it depends. I definitely know people with great lives and lots of privilege that choose to be discontented.

I also know that some people have the odds stacked so high against them that while they could "choose" to be happy- that would be a major struggle.

Some people are chemically imbalanced and can't help but feel down.


So, yeah...depends, but the statement itself is false to me.

Quoting Smokey_Taboo:" I think you can make a choice to be happy but sometimes life throw you alot of curve balls and you dont always get to be happy threw them ya know?"

  agreed. We're all tested with different obstacles. You just have to learn to deal with them properly.

Tell that to the starving children in Africa, I say.

Quoting Alissa McKeighan:" Tell that to the starving children in Africa, I say."

Pretty much.

Depression is a chemical imbalance in your brain, so based on that fact, my answer is no, happiness isn't a choice. I can pretend to be happy. I can do thinks that I like, be with people I love. But if I'm depressed, that isn't just going to go away.

Quoting Alissa McKeighan:" Tell that to the starving children in Africa, I say."

Alot of those children have really high spirits for there circumstances..

so with all of this being said...Can being 'situational' depressed be treated with medicine or does it kind of just go away on it's own as the situation changes?

<blockquote><b>Quoting Smokey_Taboo:</b>" Alot of those children have really high spirits for there circumstances.. "</blockquote>


No starving person is truly happy. No parent to a dying child is ever truly happy. Making the best that you can of a dire situation because you have no other choice doesn't mean that you're "happy". Resignation doesn't equate happiness.

To state that "happiness is a choice" is naive, to say the least. Nothing in this world is that "black and white".

Perhaps for a healthy person who has all the basic necessities in life, that may be true. But life isn't that ideal.

No, not in every situation.

I wouldn't tell someone suffering from clinical depression that they can simply up and choose to be happy.

Quoting Alissa McKeighan:" <blockquote><b>Quoting Smokey_Taboo:</b>" Alot of those children have really high ... [snip!] ... white". Perhaps for a healthy person who has all the basic necessities in life, that may be true. But life isn't that ideal."

I didnt say happy I said "high spirits" and yeah I think unbelievable how much light those children have despite near starvation, poor living condition, genocide. My daughters cousins are adopted from Ethiopia and there mother works with Lelt Foundation http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Lelt-Foundation/255300294530980 Idk I said because the stories she has told me made me think that despite what they are faced with they have more strength and hope then I have ever in my darkest times.