What we're really looking for is happiness in daily living.
The flow of life is always either pleasure or pain (physical or emotional).
Human happiness has nothing to do with pleasure or pain whatsoever.
Unhappiness is always a result of our psychological attitude towards pleasure and pain. In this teaching, that attitude is called suffering.
Happiness is simply the absence of suffering.
Unbroken happiness is "available" (after certain shifts in our perspective) in the form of unbroken peace of mind regardless of circumstance.
Suffering manifests in five different forms:
1. Guilt and shame
2. Blame and hatred
3. Pride and arrogance
4. Worries and anxiety
5. Expectations and attachment to outcomes.
Guilt, blame and pride arise because we have a deeply ingrained belief that human beings are independent "doer" entities that are separate from life, uninfluenced by life.
Worries and expectations arise because we have a deeply ingrained belief that pain makes us incomplete and unhappy, and that pleasure at some point in the future will bring us sustainable happiness.
A much more accurate description is that our thoughts, actions and decisions are always a result of our design when life conceived us and our conditioning in every moment since conception.
Our feeling of free will is both an illusion and a gift, and remains in place even after a shift in perspective has dissolved the beliefs that caused our suffering.
Our own free will is never different from the will of life, because we have never been separate from life, which has created, grown, shaped, conditioned and lived us in each moment.
When this is deeply understood, our attitude of being a separate "doer", whose completeness is determined by pleasure, falls away and peace of mind persists on a continuous basis.