Happiness
Happy: characterized by or indicative of pleasure, contentment, or joy. (1)
The pursuit of happiness is a principal that this country was founded on. It is something we strive for every day of ever year; from the day we are born to the day we die. Psychologists dissect it, philosophers theorize about it, and pastors preach about it; but it is not something that can be explicitly defined. Happiness, it seems cannot be held; you can’t see it, hear it, or taste it. You can only feel it. The idea that you can’t give form to a feeling makes happiness the subject of innumerable studies, theses, and sermons.
I have a different view of happiness. It is the same belief expression in You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown where they sing, “Happiness is morning and evening, daytime and nighttime too. For happiness is anyone and anything at all that is loved by you.” (2) I believe that it can be touched, tasted, and heard. I think that happiness can be any object, or any person. Many would say that you can’t buy happiness, but I disagree. If the thing that makes you happy can be found on a supermarket shelf, then of course it can be bought, so long as you have the money. This is the worst kind of happiness. It only lasts for as long as you have money, and people who lust for the latest in entertainment or get biggest house will soon run out of money and happiness. One person can only have so much money.
The best happiness comes from people. It comes from service to fellow human beings, and not to yourself. Happiness can be the thoughtless action that brings happiness to someone else; this is the best happiness because it lasts forever. You can always look back and feel good about something you have done to ease someone’s pain or lighten their burden.
To draw happiness through self-service is like trying to feed yourself with a forty food spoon. It can reach to the farthest paces and collect all kinds of delicacies, but you can’t bring them close enough to taste them. A forty foot spoon is better suited to feeding others. With such a huge reach, you can feed hundreds of people without moving from your seat. The happiest people I know have realized that striving to bring happiness to themselves brings too little reward for their efforts. It is by serving others that you can be happy in times of hardship, and wear a grin even in the face of death.
Ina Psychology Today article on the subject, Stephen Reiss describes this kind of happiness as value-based happiness. “Value-based happiness is a sense that out lives have meaning and fulfill some larger purpose. It represents a spiritual source of satisfaction, stemming from our deeper purpose and values.” (3)The article gives a comparison between “feel-good” happiness and value-based happiness. Where feel-good happiness comes from indulging in what life has to offer, value-based happiness comes from doing good, and doing what’s right. My addition to this idea is that happiness can be an object. It can be a person. It can be anything that brings about those pleasant feelings that we all want to experience.
In the end, the simple fact is that it is you who decides that makes you happy. It shouldn’t require the man on the television to hell you how to be happy. There is no need to emulate your happy-go-lucky neighbor to the letter. The chances are, you happy-go-lucky neighbor chooses to draw happiness from what he already has: Days and nights, a life to live, and the people around him.
We live in a world where many expect good things to come to them without any effort on their part. The same applies to happiness. Margaret Young, a performer of the twentieth century said it best:
Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier,. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.
Happiness is akin to most tangible aspects of life; it doesn’t come to us without hard work, determination, and the like.
“Happiness is not having what you want but wanting what you have.”-Rabbi Hyman Schachtel.