Ideally, happiness -- a state of mind -- a perception, if you will -- must be able to exist regardless of the results of life's excursions. That does not render the excursions themselves pointless; quite to the contrary. Much is to be gained from the journey itself. But if you agree that happiness should exist independently of these journeys, then the logical extension thereof is that it is not that which you seek that brings the happiness but a preexisting choice. A results-based threshold of happiness is doomed.
Suppose for a moment that you were the sole living being on a planet with a limited food supply. You need the food to live, yet you know there is not enough to last you your natural life. To not hunt the food is to die a certain death. To successfully hunt the food brings a sating soon tarnished as the thief time steals from you; thief winning, you die yet.
To not hunt, is to die. To hunt, also, is to die. Choosing to stay at home in the mind means the self will live a happiness that is swaddled in the blind cloth of awareness, as if our lone survivor could manufacture boundless food in his mind.
For betting on a threshold of results, you will surely die.
