Happiness Read online

  I learned that there are things about life that an instant gratification culture simply cannot teach. Some things — like integrity or growth, for instance — take time. They come in long sweeping arcs that begin at one end of life and go all the way to the other. The resolution of them, the measure of them, can be estimated only by measuring them in terms of the years of their usefulness.

  Happiness is like that. There are numbers of things, myriads of attempts, that come into our lives posing as “happiness” but turn out to be posers, at best. The wedding pictures do not tell the whole story. The money does not begin to describe the joy of the years. These things are, at best, only the shards of memory that raise the question, am I happy? Really? Over and over again in my heart until one day, perhaps, I become wise enough to finally answer it for myself.

  Then, we come to realize that there are pieces of the puzzle lying along the way to be gathered in and finally evaluated for their ring of the authentic.

  First, the world around us is grappling with the problem of happiness daily. What others seek, as well as what they discard, has a great deal to say to us about our own situation. They give us a standard to steer by — either to or from the things that the world in general seems to believe would make them happy if they had it. Only one thing seems really clear: things are not what people are really seeking to make themselves happy. They want an education, good health, and enough to live on with dignity.

  But after that, the record goes silent. What they do with that education, that health, and that sense of “enoughness” — other than have it — is unclear. Surely simple subsistence is not enough. Though we have some basic information about what makes life livable, for more understanding of what really makes people happy, makes life worth living in the midst of its stresses and strains, we need to look elsewhere.

  Science gives us a clue: the human being is not simply an eating/sleeping/laughing machine. We are not neutral in our approach to life. We have feelings and tastes and desires and the need to seek pleasure. We are not organisms made to live a standard number of years and then disappear into the mist of the universe without a trace.

  Instead, there is some connection, we know now, between our physical selves and our emotional selves. Happiness is an organ of the soul that is meant to be nourished. We have an innate capacity for “happiness,” for a feeling of well-being and euphoria that is of the essence of what it means to be alive, to be human.

  What we do about happiness, medicine also teaches us, will have a great deal to do with the way our bodies respond and our minds develop. We will live longer, more productive lives, they tell us, if we’re happy. Negative stress makes us ill. Happiness binds us to the very lives we live — or separates us from it in the worst of ways.

  We are happiness creatures in search of ourselves. To ignore this reality is to deprive the soul of life and the heart of hope and the mind of joy and life itself of energy, of productivity, of accomplishment.

  So clear, so strong are these awarenesses now of the physical dimensions of happiness that we are finally on the brink of realizing that our happiness is actually in our hands. It is not a thing made of ether and silliness. It is not an excursion into froth and marshmallow. It is a necessary part of what it means to be alive, to be a capacious and creative member of the human race.

  Happiness is what outlasts all the suffering in the world. It is the by-product of learning to live well, to choose well, to become whole, and to be everything we are meant to be — for our sake and for the sake of the rest of the world, as well.

  But all the while the new psychology is intent on teaching us how to identify our bliss and how to build it, we are also learning that we do not become happy by telling ourselves that we are. There is more to happiness than creating an image to live in and then failing to ever become the fullness of ourselves.

  We become happy by learning to appreciate what we have as well as to achieve what we want.

  We become happy by cultivating the highest levels of human response in ourselves — in the arts, culture, creativity, understanding, productivity, and purpose.

  We become happy by concentrating on the gifts of life rather than obsessing over its possible pitfalls. As Ezra Taft Benson said, “The more we express our gratitude to God for our blessings, the more God will give to our mind other blessings. The more we are aware to be grateful for, the happier we will become.”

  We become happy by refusing to allow externals to be the measure of the acme of our souls. “Those who have cattle,” the Kenyans teach us, “have care.”

  We become happy by refusing to be beguiled by accumulation or power or pure utilitarianism, by power or excess or withdrawal from the great encounters with life. For it is the happy life that asks more of us than we realize we have and then surprises us by enabling it in us.

  We become happy by defining a purpose in life and pursuing it with all the heart that is in us, with all the energy we have. Then we, all of us — those around me and I myself — may know ourselves at the end to have lived well and done well, to have known the tide of a general, pervasive, deep, and overwhelming sense of well-being, to have been born for a purpose and to have achieved it.

  Finally, we must learn to keep our eye on happiness rather than simply on pleasure. It is the confusion of the two that endangers the goal.

  The Desert Monastics tell a story about a young monk.

  One day a young monk asked one of the elders why it is that so many people came out to the desert to seek God and yet most of them gave up after a short time and returned to their lives in the city.

  And the old monastic responded:

  “Last evening my dog saw a rabbit running for cover among the bushes of the desert and he began to chase the rabbit, barking loudly. Soon other dogs joined the chase, barking and running. They ran a great distance and alerted many other dogs. Soon the wilderness was echoing the sounds of their pursuit, but the chase went on into the night.

  “After a little while, many of the dogs grew tired and dropped out. A few chased the rabbit until the night was nearly spent. By morning, only my dog continued the hunt.

  “Do you understand,” the old man said, “what I have told you?”

  “No,” replied the young monastic, “I don’t.”

  “It is simple,” said the desert father. “My dog saw the rabbit!”

  The process of redefining happiness for ourselves lies in learning to keep our eyes on the real thing. Once you know what that really is, you will never stop pursuing it.

  Endnotes

  chapter 1

  1. George Vaillant’s study is discussed in Joshua Wolf Shenk, “What Makes Us Happy?” The Atlantic, June 2009, 36-53.

  chapter 2

  1. See http://charterofcompassion.org.

  chapter 3

  1. Eric Bland, “‘Happiness Meter’ Analyzes Blogs, Tweets,” http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/07/31/happiness-meter.html (accessed August 20, 2009).

  2. Marcus Buckingham, “What’s Happening to Women’s Happiness?” www.huff

  ingtonpost.com/marcus-buckingham/whats-happening-to-womens_b_289511.html (accessed December 14, 2009).

  chapter 4

  1. Marina Kamenev, “Rating Countries for the Happiness Factor,” www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2006/gb20061011_072596.htm (accessed August 20, 2009).

  chapter 5

  1. Ronald Inglehart, “Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World,” http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org /wvs/articles/folder_published/article_base_54 (accessed August 20, 2009).

  2. “Inglehart-Welzel Cultural Map of the World.”

  chapter 6

  1. Jeanna Bryner, “Happiest States are Wealthy and Tolerant,” www.livescience.com/culture/091110-happy-states.html (accessed November 10, 2009).

  2. “Happiest States are Wealthy and Tolerant.”

  3. “Hap
piest States are Wealthy and Tolerant.”

  chapter 7

  1. Jeanna Bryner, “Happiest States are Wealthy and Tolerant,” www.livescience.com/culture/091110-happy-states.html (accessed November 10, 2009).

  chapter 8

  1. “How Men and Women Cope in a Recession — Men Will Fare Worse Because for Them, Money Equals Happiness,” http://nz.nielson.com/news/Happiness_Dec08.shtml (accessed August 20, 2009).

  chapter 9

  1. “The Pursuit of Happiness,” www.pursuit-of-happiness.org (accessed January 30, 2010).

  2. “The Biology of Happiness,” www.abc.net/au/science/features/happiness (accessed January 30, 2010).

  chapter 10

  1. “Your Body Is Your Subconscious Mind,” DVD © 2000 Sounds True, Inc., Boulder, CO.

  chapter 12

  1. “Reiss Study Key to Happiness,” www.reissprofile.eu/index.cgi?lang=1&src=1&tab

  =1&page=182 (accessed August 20, 2009).

  chapter 14

  1. Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (New York: Penguin Press, 2008, Kindle Edition).

  chapter 15

  1. “Happiness ‘Immune to Life Events,’”

  www.newsvote.bbb.co.uk/mpapps/pagetools/print/news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7502443.stm (accessed July 14, 2008).

  chapter 17

  1. Sonja Lyubomirsky, The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want (New York: Penguin Press, 2008, Kindle Edition).

  2. Oxford Happiness Project, www.meaningandhappiness.com/Oxford-happiness-questions/Naire/214.

  chapter 24

  1. Martin E. P. Seligman, Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment (New York: The Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster, Inc., 2002, Kindle Edition).

  chapter 40

  1. See www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=271&letter=H&search=

  happiness (accessed February 28, 2010).

  chapter 44

  1. Sachiko Murata and William Chittick, The Vision of Islam

  (St. Paul: Paragon House, 1994), 15.