Emergent happiness is the joy, contentment, and sense of well-being you experience when the world around you and the world inside you are in harmony. This all-encompassing, deeply-felt form of happiness arises not through individual effort alone but through the efforts of communities, families, and social circles working together to build a happiness ecosystem.

A Brief Introduction

The term “emergent” is used in science and philosophy to describe something that is more than the sum of its parts. Emergent happiness is more than just the combination of happiness from within and happiness with life events. The power of life circumstances to evoke joy or despair depends on one’s inner life, which includes thoughts and beliefs, attitudes, desires or cravings, memories, goals, and tendencies to react in certain ways. Likewise, the power of one’s thoughts, beliefs, and desires to create happiness depend on surrounding life circumstances (including one’s social environment).

For example, the inner desire to help others tends to create emergent happiness when one also has the ability to help others, and there are others nearby who need just the sort of help one can provide. Consider videos of people rescuing abandoned kittens or pulling animals out of raging rivers. These give rise to a sense of satisfaction and well-being not solely because the animal is rescued, but because the desire to help is in harmony with the actual experience of helping. The desire alone is not enough to generate emergent happiness. Similarly, the experience of helping is not enough for someone who has no desire to help. Only when these two occur together (the desire or attitude and the event) is emergent happiness likely.

Why is it important to notice that the interaction between one’s inner world and outer life are linked to happiness?

To answer that question, start by thinking about the things in life that make you happy. As a person in a physical body living a human life in a world with billions of other humans, what do you need in order to experience well-being? Set aside stereotypes about the causes of happiness, like fame, wealth, and material possessions, and focus instead on the basics, such as connection or social harmony, purpose, worth or respect, and freedom. These all involve particular life situations or conditions outside oneself, out in the world. In other words, well-being is influenced by the conditions of life, things we may not directly control. When these basic conditions are met, we’re more likely to experience happiness. I’ll call this form of happiness “life happiness.” Life happiness involves a sense of well-being, feelings of joy or contentment, and perceptions that “all is well.”

Next, think about happiness that you’ve felt from within, the kind that can arise even when your life is difficult. I’ll call this form of happiness “inner happiness.” Inner happiness can come about through gratitude, patience, determination, or mental silence. If you can rest your thoughts, you may experience a sense of peace and happiness that seems to defy explanation.

Notably, inner happiness can also come about as a result of mental distortions. For example, if you tell yourself things really aren’t so bad when, based on your habitual way of classifying life events, they actually are, you might experience a fragile sort of inner happiness. You might minimize the significance of a loss or convince yourself that someone cares about your feelings when they are being abusive. While I’m lumping this “happiness” into the same category as the inner peace that arises when thoughts subside, they are not the same. Nevertheless, notice how happiness is influenced by your thoughts or the absence of thought.

Recognizing the existence of inner happiness (and pursuing or attaining it) has helped many people find peace following trauma or loss, face challenging circumstances with strength, or take responsibility for emotions that only they themselves can change. It motivates us to look within and discover a deep source of joy and contentment that we tend to miss when we focus on life.

On the flip side, recognition of inner happiness can inspire people to reject life happiness or reject the fact that life experiences influence our well-being. This fuels the conviction that individuals are only responsible for their own happiness, that no one else must take responsibility, and they are not responsible for the happiness of anyone else. In other words, we are all happiness islands. If you’re unhappy, according to this view, it is your fault and yours alone, and nothing I do or fail to do should have any impact on your well-being (and vice versa). Is this always true? A rejection of life happiness does not necessarily make inner happiness easier to cultivate. In fact, it probably has the opposite effect.

Going back to emergent happiness, experiment by holding these two ideas in your mind at the same time:

• Happiness comes from within. If you want to be truly happy, you need to look inside yourself and focus on your own thoughts and attitudes. Happiness is your responsibility.
• Happiness depends on life circumstances. We all have basic social and emotional needs, and our happiness is influenced by the fulfillment of these needs. We influence the happiness of others.

When you can see the truth of both of these ideas at the same time, something unexpected happens. A new form of happiness becomes possible. The term “emergent happiness” means that this new happiness emerges from the interactions between your particular outer life circumstances, your social surroundings, and your inner mental states.

Emergent happiness is rooted in our interdependence. This means that it is co-created.

This happiness has some unexpected qualities. It is characterized by love and compassion, and you can experience it even if your life is stressful, and your mind is troubled. In that sense, emergent happiness transcends the usual inner and life happiness. It arises in the harmony between the two. These two seemingly opposite sources of happiness merge to create something new.