As someone who writes about happiness, I'm often challenged to answer these three questions:

　　作為一個寫有關“快樂”的文章的人，我通常被問到下麵的3個問題：

　　1. How do I define "happiness," anyway?

　　我到底是如何定義“快樂”?

　　2. Instead of happiness, which is fleeting/deceptive/egotistical/illusory, isn't the real goal to achieve joy/contentment/satisfaction/peace/self-realization or [fill in the blank]?

　　與其追求“快樂”這種短暫的/騙人的/自私性的/虛幻的東西，難道我們不該追求愉快/滿足/滿意/平和/自我實現或其他什麼嗎?

　　3. How can we agree on what it means to achieve these states? What I mean by happiness might not be what you mean by happiness. You say happiness is a warm puppy; I say happiness is living alone in a cabin at Walden Pond; etc.

　　對於我們而言，實現這些狀態意味著什麼呢? 我對快樂的定義和你的不一樣。你說快樂是一隻溫暖的小狗；我說快樂是獨自住在Walden Pond的一間小木屋裏麵；等等。

　　In law school, we spent an entire semester discussing the meaning of a "contract," and I know all too well how a term can elude you as you try to define it. For the purposes of my happiness project, I decided not to worry about definitions too much. In scholarship, there's merit in defining terms precisely, and one positive psychology study identified fifteen different academic definitions of happiness, but when it came to my project, spending a lot of energy exploring the distinctions among "contentment," "positive affect," "subjective well-being," "hedonic tone," and a myriad of other terms didn't seem necessary. I decided instead to follow the hallowed tradition set by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who defined obscenity by saying, "I know it when I see it."

　　在法學院，我們花了一整個學期討論“合同”的定義，我很了解，越想定義一個術語，越難以抓住這個術語的含義。為了我的快樂計劃，我決定不去考慮定義。在學術方麵，準確定義術語是有價值的，有一個積極的心理學研究為快樂找出了十五種不同的學術定義，但是在我的計劃裏，似乎沒有必要花很多精力探討“自足”、“積極影響”、“主觀幸福”、“享樂情調”等無數個其它術語之間的區別。相反，我決定追尋最高法院大法官波特斯圖爾特的神聖傳統——他用一句“當我看到它就會認出它”的話定義猥褻。

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