American superstar Michael Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana on August 29, 1958 and entertained audiences nearly his entire life. His father, Joseph Jackson, had been a guitarist but was forced to give up his musical ambitions following his marriage to Katherine (Scruse). Together they prodded their growing family's musical interests at home. By the early 60s the older boys Jackie, Tito and Jermaine had begun performing around the city; by 1964 Michael and Marlon had joined in.
Through his "Heal the World" Foundation, Jackson spearheaded airlifts of food and medical supplies to war-torn Sarajevo, instituted mentoring, immunization and drug-abuse education programs and paid for a Hungarian child's liver transplant.
Second child, daughter Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, is born. [3 April 1998]
Happiness and unhappiness
are opposite sides of a judgement about your situation. If you judge your situation as bad for you, that's unhappiness. If you judge a situation as good for you, that's happiness.
The experience of happiness is one of those general terms we use to say, "I feel good emotionally." People use different terms to describe what feels good for them. For someone it might be excitement, passion, exhilaration, fulfillment, freedom, feeling fully alive with inspiration and joy. For another it might be more peaceful, content, capable, hopeful, satisfied, and comfortable feeling. Whatever you call it, it just feels darn good.
Our natural state of being is to be happy. When you remove all the uncomfortable emotions we humans can experience (and they are numerous), you're left with happiness. So it's easiest to define happiness by what it is not.
Pleasure vs. Happiness
Happiness is not pleasure although they can appear similar. Pleasure is enjoyment of an outside stimuli. You might find pleasure in buying a new car, or in going on vacation, or having friends over for dinner, or having sex, or....the list is long on what you might enjoy experiencing. Pleasure requires an external stimuli for you to experience it. Happiness does not. Happiness is a belief about yourself and the outside world. You can be doing something you normally experience as pleasurable but not be happy! Pleasure is born from the external world, happiness is born from the internal workings of our own minds.
