Happiness is?

Personal happiness, its something I've never been able to grasp properly, only fleetingly like a handful of sand. Sometimes I just can't seem to be happy, then for no reason at all my whole outlook changes. Maybe if I went to some medical professional I'd be diagnosed with bipolar or some depressive disorder. As you can probably tell, I'm constantly trying to work it out. Usually I put it down to myself being a sceptic, as a (feeble) mathematician and scientist I tend to over critically assess everything. Despite all my attempted rational thinking, I still fall short of a complete understanding or realisation of happiness. This to me seems like a paradox, why isn't the logically correct and true way the happiest? There are a two possibilities, either happiness requires irrationally or I've got rationality all wrong.

Despite my Christian upbringing, my way of thinking is more readily identifiable with a sceptical atheist, critically assessing anything and everything, generally being a sarcastic smart-arse. This way of thinking is based on the idea that proof is required for everything, therefore the supernatural is just a silly notion that should be dismissed without evidence and emotion is just a mental construct of which I have no time for. But this is where my reasoning first begins to chase its tail. Most of the things I do are concerned with being happy, I like warmth and food because my brain tells me I like it and it makes me happy. I enjoy knowledge and critically being sarcastic because my brain says I like it. And there it is, my basis for dismissing emotion is based on emotion. Last time I checked, that counted as a major logical flaw. Should I then reject emotion completely for no reason? Well I guess I could try, but its something I find difficult to imagine ever being able to do. What purpose would it achieve? And there's another flaw, my reasoning is becoming holier than the pope and all I'm trying to do is grasp it. Why do I talk of purpose? Surely there is no purpose to life, I see no evidence for it, we are just arrangements of atoms. A quote from wachmen sums it up "A live human body and a deceased human body have the same number of particles. Structurally there's no difference." But yet, this ever present, seemingly illogical sense persuades me that happiness is paramount and purpose is important. To fight it would be pointless, as I have shown, the feeling is either illogical and there is no point to anything (pointless) or there's something more and to fight it is just kicking against the goads.

Despite being stuck between the two ways of thinking, they nicely come to a similar conclusion: that I should be concerned with my own happiness and purpose should not be dismissed so readily. So that's where I'm currently up to, my main motivation is happiness, but I still haven't answered my early question of how I can be happy. So I haven't really got anywhere...