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Is it happy to bring others what you consider as happiness?

I'm particularly confused by "bring others".

My best guess was: Convincing others in what you believe is happiness.

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I believe it should be parsed as this:

Is it happy to (bring others (what you consider as happiness))?

This appears to be invoking the slightly idiomatic construction 'to bring someone happiness' which is semantically more-or-less the same as saying 'to cause someone to be happy'. However in this sentence the simple noun 'happiness' has been replaced with the more complex noun phrase 'what you consider as happiness'.

This seems to be in recognition of the fact that - for example - while for one person, happiness might mean being proud of their possessions, for another person it might mean being in love with their partner, and for another person still it might mean being excited about their job (or of course it may also mean any combination of these things). Therefore, 'to bring others what you consider as happiness' is to cause other people to experience happiness - but happiness as you understand it.

The final layer then is the enveloping question. To my mind it's a slightly awkward albeit not incorrect construction, but in essence 'Is it happy' is a terse way of saying 'Does it make a person happy'.

So perhaps a more explicit way of expressing the same idea would be:

'Does it make one happy to cause other people to experience one's own conception of happiness?'

or alternatively, interpreting 'you' as the personal pronoun:

'Does it make you happy to cause other people to experience your conception of happiness?'

In any case, this is an odd sentence and I would be interested to know the wider context.

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  • Thanks for your great answer. The sentence is from a Japanese ( i believe ) game: Illusion Connect. You can see such weird sentences every time you go to battle.
    – let it begin
    Commented Mar 17, 2021 at 21:13
  • @letitbegin that makes sense. I don't think a native English speaker would have written this sentence.
    – Jack Byrne
    Commented Mar 17, 2021 at 21:18
  • @letitbegin You should have explained in your original question where the sentence came from. People who ask questions about unidentified quotes are always asked for the source.
    – Kate Bunting
    Commented Mar 18, 2021 at 9:24

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