I completely agree with the first statement. The second follows synthetically from it.
The last line has problematic terms; free will and consciousness.
I take them to mean in this context the very same thing as the happiness of the first statement; namely, self-valuing.
Mr Choi wisely upholds happiness as a logic, rather than projecting it as an outcome.
Or: The pursuit of happiness could only depart from a happy state.
Happiness is the state accomplished by willingly pursuing the hope of it (Heaven placed above the Earth).
In which case the pursuit becomes the happiness.
This is why people who sought happiness in making money never have enough. They’re never happy with what they have, because their happiness is in earning.
Joy is the perception of progress (whether valid or not).
It has been my contention that the pursuit of happiness
is/has been one of the greatest paths to discontentment and
unhappiness and misery in human being lives. For this pursuit of
something so unachievable and transitory, has lead countless
humans to forswore real human values like knowledge and
truth. the real battle is not to happiness but to understand
who we are and who we want to be and that battle is not
about happiness, but about finding out the truth.
the medieval man thought the path to happiness was
the struggle to reach god, but what if there isn’t a god?
A lifelong struggle to reach god will fail because there is no god.
reject the path to find happiness and aim higher,
take the path to find out what it means to be human
or as Nietzsche said, become who you are…
Kropotkin
A very wise message, albeit a stoic one, originating in the deep derecesses of classical time, having far reaching repercussions. Countering the over elevation of hubris, tempering the real acceptance of painful adjustment to the painful process of the coming of wisdom, through the attainment of simplicity.
I dunno man. I think there’s a point where you have enough money. Now there are a handful of crazy billionaire types out there in the world who would show that there’s an exception. But I mean, once you can afford to control your time, buy all the comfort that you want, and all that sort of thing you can get bored trying to get more money and just want to spend your time doing whatever it is that your whims direct you to do while still really being happy about the money.
Where is your catharsis?
If your catharsis is in depositing those checks or counting those coins, you will never have enough of them.
What you choose to pursue as your highest goal in life (for those who choose), along with your situation in life, is what determines how much joy you will experience in life … and for how long. MIJOT is the “meta-goal” for choosing the best goal to suit the pursuits for your life.
I dunno James. Maybe, fundamentally, I just enjoy being a bit of a prick during the course of my day to day life. I can’t say for sure why that is, but it’s something that I do instinctively as a matter of routine. I’m a pretty happy person, so I just assume that whatever I’m doing must be what’s making me happy.
As I said, “Where is your catharsis”. If that is yours, then you will never be tire of being a prick and never enough of one. 
That is a very interesting idea. People gravitate to activities that make them happy by nature, seeking happiness is ironically the conscious mind being dumb. This idea doesn’t apply in absolutes, though. What happens when the person is suffering an Accutane side effect? Or the person has a family history and genetic factors of depression? Pursuing happiness sometimes is not enough to actually be happy.
The conscious effort to pursue happiness can be precarious because that is like asking the mule to carry the sleeping farmer to the best whore house. 
It’s generally best to let the farmer do the general directing when he’s awake.
Or let the sleeping farmer do the directing while hes not awake, without the mule of course.
Contentment, is farting out quoteworthies (that aren’t grounded in evidence) out your butt.
So old… Happiness isn’t found, it is created.
And yet, still so true.
Fixed Cross,
What are you saying here? You seem to be saying that in order to search for happiness, we have to be happy in the first place?
If that’s the case, it doesn’t even sound logical.
Why would we be pursuing something which is already our inner experience? Unless I’m misunderstanding your use of the word “depart”.
At times we can find happiness - it’s happenstance and it does come to us in whatever form we experience its qualia.
Can something which flows through us for a time BE us?
For instance, what negative emotions, like fear?
Yes, we need a challenge.
Is he being facetious here? Without “consciousness”, where is the wise choice[s]?
Pursuing knowledge and truth is about happiness, is it not?
I agree about happiness, with the OP and the statement about happiness being in the earning of money, therefore simply having money isn’t ever going to produce happiness. Happiness is literally the gaining-transacting of values, and nothing besides.
Happiness is an action, an active state that flows from values-structures. Happiness is 100% purely a logical being. Every coherent emotion is an active reconstitution of a chain of previous-past meanings working in the present moment to mediate near futures; all of which are implicitly values-operations. You can’t produce happiness by stimulating the neurotransmitters in the brain through drugs for example, such as taking ecstasy, but you can simulate happiness for a short time by doing that; the end result is two-fold: 1) that the simulation also produces some real values-actions that also generate some of their own happiness according to the ontic reality of the self-valuing as such beyond all simulation, and 2) that the simulating burns through reserve energy clusters (points of interaction between more than one value or self-valuing) leading to a sharp drop-off of happiness after a short duration of time.
Hapiness after the final analysis, after, most of the river has flown under ones bridge is trying to give back anything positive
received during a life time.