If a genie granted you 3 wishes, and you used the first one to wish for happiness, what would you need with the other two?
To be healthy & to have unlimited funds when needed for anything that I could do without being greedy or selfish.
Great question! As long as that wish for happiness was according to how I define it, I probably wouldn't need the other two; however, my second wish would be for three additionally wishes. I'd wish to end world hunger and poverty, and the third would be the ability to use additional three any time I choose.
The first wish would not be for happiness or any emotion, because that happiness would be an illusion and my knowing that would defeat the wish. I would wish that Barry Sanders had become president. I would wish that pets would only be adopted by people who will care for them and never by people who would abuse them. I would wish that the God question could be answered so that we could finally be done with this nonsense of religion.
With these kinds of wish scenarios the devil is always in the details. "Happiness" could be a drug-induced coma. Each wish must be carefully defined in paragraphs not simple words or sentences. What if the genie misunderstands? I once saw a hysterical bumper sticker advertising a restaurant in Buellton, CA that specializes in pea soup that said, "Imagine whirled peas!" Wishing for "happiness" for oneself in a world full of misery could translate as the IQ of an idiot and the inability to empathize. "Be careful what you wish for" has to be the guiding principle
The Tzadik of Minsk once told his student to find and bring back the shirt of the happiest man in the world. After 7 years, the student returned, sans shirt. His master asked if the student had found the happiest man in the world, and the student said "Yes, but he had no shirt..."