What is happiness?

They say that happiness belongs to those who have ample wealth as with wealth every hope and wishes is being fulfilled.Being wealthy gaurantees that one is listened to and one's weaknesses is often overlooked or easily forgotten. Money justifies all even if it is the root of all evil. One the other hand poverty and destitution makes every genuine and sincere effort goes unrecognized or unappreciated, ones endeavors are often buried in failures, one's words carries no water. What is sometimes worse is that one tends to become a victim of exploitations by unscrupulous individuals with the power of having greater wealth.
But the measures of Happiness warrants deeper understanding and a thorough research as many would say that happiness is relative. I am a wealthy man although my pockets are empty but my wealth is in my living experiences, my years of travelling and the places and people whose lives I have touched one way or another. The many different cultures I have been a part of even if for a short period of time, learning things that no amount of reading or watching TV can teach. I am a wealthy man because I have seen, touched tasted and experienced wealth in all its glory throughout my life. Hence in this sense I am a rich man but when it comes to having real money or property, I never could qualify myself among the well to do. Why is this so? My mother never said much in terms of advice but one of the few things she said that had stuck with me were that when it comes to food and drinks never be stingy as when it comes to cloaths and other conveniences as money spent on food is money well spent and never a waste. She also told me that when it comes to handling money I have holes in my palms. I beleive it has to do with my being a spendtrift I cannot keep money, I spend faster than I make and I never thought of my future living always in the now. If I have money I like to see others have it too and those who dont or are in dire need I find it not hard at all to depart with whatever I have sometimes detrimental to my own financial state.
I am a believer is wealth is something one share not something one hoard for so called rainy days. Often the rainy days do not come at least not in the negative sense and even if it does one always will find help to see through these days because there are those who will be will to share their wealth just as you had shared yours. At least this is my believe and I had lived by this believe right or wrong. Perhaps the lesson I am learning right now the falacy that I had lived by, that giving and sharing is well and good for the birds, for man it is fuck you, I should be taking care of Number One and thats Me!
Wealth is also having good health which I cannot complain about too much. I have been seriously ill once or twice in my life, like a bout of Malaria when I was in my teenage years and then I suffered from a kind of accident that caused fluid to build up in my lungs in the early 1983 in Corte Madera, Marin County. California from which I thought I was going to die. Other than that I am normally healthy and am thankful for. Without health what is the use of having all the money in the world? Even as I am typing this words my friend's Indonesian maid interupted my to ask about Tumors! Does her mother in Indonesia need to have it removed and if she does it would cost her 4million Rupiah, equivalent of her eight month salary working as a maid. What can I tell this maid? That life is a bitch and then some? To have good health and well being is another form of wealth often more precious than having financial stability.
Sounds so far like an old folk remedy of life and how to deal with money, having and not having, rich and poor, sad and happiness, where is all this leading up to? Well this is what happens when you have time and no money on your hand.Then there are those whose happiness hangs in their sense of accomplishment, their achievements their success in whatever they undertake to achieve as their life's goal. Remember that guy Longfellow Deeds? Now there's a guy with lots of money and does not need any of it except that it was meant to be spread around. We can go on and on about happiness and being happy anh money or no money has to do with it or being the toughest man or smartest nerd has to do with it, but the fact still remains one seek happiness throguhout oine's life like it or not just like it is a quest set up by the AlMighty or the Buddhas or some Cosmic Joker out there, a quest that some of us are willing to kill or be killed to fulfill it. We have created all manners of ideas and phylosophies, spiritual as well as psychological 'isms'in order to justify ourselves and our purpose for wanting to procure what it is to be eternally happy.
Thus far we have had prophets and philosophers, rishis and roshis,scientists and artists trying to create for us what this sense of happiness is or what it entails.
Oh my God i am so sad, so depressed, so bored with life, what am I going to do with myself? HOW OFTEN DOES ONE HEAR THIS MOANING AND GROANING!!