Indeed, interesting conversations!

This takes us to the difficulty to define what happiness is. And thanks to your sentence in bold, we may actually have a workable definition for what is happiness at the core, from a metaphysical perspective. Happiness is gratitude to be (exist). Which can then take a million “shades”: gratitude to be… warm(er), fully fed, loved, surprised… But at the core, from the perspective of God, I would really say that is what defines happiness. And that is also the core contrast from the perspective of God: to be or not to be! Existence vs. non-existence! Dark vs. Light. :-) Which is also what you find in many esoteric/spiritual teachings: the fulfillment and bliss of the feeling to “just be”.

Thanks for your insight, it helped me move forward in my thinking/understanding.