I’m Worth So Much More Than Happiness

Happiness.

It’s our birthright, written into this country’s Declaration of Independence. Alongside the promise of life and liberty are four little words – the pursuit of happiness. But these four little words have been turned into a religion all of their own. Is this one of the roots to anxiety and depression?

What is happiness anyway?

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life,” said Albert Camus. For this article, my goal was not to define happiness or find another happiness formula, but to explore the many faces happiness wears. In writings that span centuries, from Aristotle to Charlotte Bronte to Winnie the Pooh, I searched for an answer to my question: what is happiness?

Walt Whitman declares it untouchable, fading into nothing as rapidly as a breath.

What is happiness, anyhow?
…so impalpable,
a mere breath,
an evanescent tinge…”
-Walt Whitman

Paulo Coelho considers it a miracle.

 “Considering the way the world is,
one happy day is almost a miracle.”
-Paulo Coelho

Charlotte Bronte says, in Villette, that happiness is intangible – a divine dew falling upon the soul.

“Happiness is a glory
shining far down upon us out of Heaven.
She is a divine dew
which the soul,
on certain of its summer mornings,
feels dropping upon it from the amaranth bloom
and golden fruitage of Paradise.”
-Charlotte Bronte

Happiness is a beautiful mystery.

Sometimes it comes upon us so silently we’re barely aware of it. In the play of the sunlight across fingers and the warmth of a teacup in hands comes an inner stillness, and we suddenly become aware of happiness, resting its arm gently across our shoulders. And in the first lyrics of a song it can vanish, so rapidly we wonder if it had ever been there.

Charlotte Bronte continues, in her meditation on happiness:

“No mockery in this world
ever sounds to me so hollow
as that of being told to cultivate happiness.
What does such advice mean?
Happiness is not a potato,
to be planted in mould, and tilled with manure.”
-Charolotte Bronte

How can we pursue something we can’t hold in our hands? Yet today we’re told to grow and cultivate happiness as if it were exactly that – a potato crop.

Can happiness be cultivated?

Bookstores and blogs and social media feeds spill over with articles speaking of finding, increasing, and holding on to happiness, as though it is indeed a potato we can hold in our hands. Self-care. Spark joy. Try something new. The rules are varied, but most of them come down to structuring our lives so that we find work that makes us feel fulfilled, have time for rest and recreation, and surround ourselves with beautiful things.

We say money can’t buy happiness, yet so many pursuits of happiness seem to require it.

The end result is only one part of happiness. When things and experiences are the ultimate pursuit, we eventually feel bored and smothered. Because there is a second component to happiness, more thrilling than the thing itself.

Enter Winnie the Pooh.

“What do you like doing best in the world, Pooh?” asks Christopher Robin. 

“Well,” said Pooh, “what I like best-” and then he had to stop and think.
Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do,
there was a moment just before you began to eat it
which was better than when you were,
but he didn’t know what it was called.

Anticipation

It’s the drug that fuels the hard work of our pursuit. We need it. It’s what drives us to reach goals that we’d otherwise give up on. And when we reach our goal, and stand with arms raised, heart pounding, the sweat of the journey soaking our shoulders, the exultant feeling is magnificent.

But the exhileration eventually fades.

As this becomes the new normal, we find ourselves living in the ordinary again. And we’ve been conditioned to believe that ordinary can’t hold happiness. So we set our next goal in a different direction. But that also becomes the new normal. And so we try another direction.

“Happiness is a ball after which we run
wherever it rolls,
and we push it with our feet when it stops.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It’s not the honey itself, but the pre-honey feeling we’re chasing, but we don’t know that. Our founding fathers called it the pursuit of happiness. Phsycologists today call it the hedonic treadmill. Winnie the Pooh didn’t know what it was, he just knew it was better than honey itself.

Which, for Winnie the Pooh, is saying a lot.

We buy things and start new hobbies, which eventually leads to being overwhelmed and exhausted with shuffling schedules, and organizing the stuff which isn’t getting used anymore. And we’re told that another way to be happy is by volunteering. So we find a cause or charity to be passionate about. But eventually that newness fizzles into normal. And we eventually become bored and burned out, and depressed with a humanity that won’t be changed. And then we hear about minimalism, and the life changing magic of tidying up. And the thrill of getting rid of all the stuff we’ve been trying to clean and rearrange makes us feel free and alive again. But when minimalism is accomplished, it becomes the new normal. And to avoid buying more things to find something new again, we’re told that what we’re missing is me time. But the new self-care routine and yoga and meditation practices eventually become the new normal, and so we pursue more rest, and different recreation. Does this spark joy? This? Or this? A new job. A new diet. A new president. New politics. New deals. New friends. New spouses. They all promise happiness but never deliver.

And so the cycle continues, like a concentric circle, with just enough variations that we don’t recognize it.

New makes us happy, yes. But it’s impossible to maintain. It’s exhausting. It leads to frustration and depression and anxiety. Mark Twain recognized this tendency of ours. He says happiness isn’t a thing in itself – it’s only a contrast with something unpleasant. And when the novelty fades, you have to do something new.

“As soon as the novelty is over
and the force of the contrast dulled,
it ain’t happiness any longer,
and you have to get something fresh.”
-Mark Twain

Bertrand Russell again:

“A life too full of excitement
is an exhausting life,
in which continually stronger stimuli are needed
to give the thrill that has come to be thought
an essential part of pleasure.”
-Bertrand Russell

Happiness that rests on things and experiences never lasts, and always requires more and newer. It’s an eternal fever, in the words of Byron:

“There is no such thing as a life of passion
any more than a continuous earthquake,
or an eternal fever.
Besides, who would ever
shave themselves in such a state?”
-Lord Byron

The First Happiness Lie

There is a lie about happiness that I believed for years. That if I was happy, then good things would come to me. We’re told that happy people are energized, creative, healthy, and productive. As though happiness is the driver that will bring health and success. So we focus on happiness first. And wonder why we never attain it for more than a day.

Happiness is not a driver. It’s a follower.

Emotions are followers. They are reactions, rising instinctively within us, in response to circumstances, and people. Unpredictable. They’re like the tail of a dog. You ever watch a dog chase its tail? That’s exactly what we’re doing – chasing something that’s meant to follow. We’d never say we’re pursuing sadness, or trying to do things that make us angry. Yet is an obsession with pursuing happiness any different? Isn’t it just as damaging?

Yes, that’s a radical statement to make a point, but human beings were never designed to attain one emotion at the neglect of all others. We were designed for resilience.

It’s like elastic. When elastic is stretched in one direction only, it eventually becomes brittle, and loses its ability to spring back to normal. We were meant to return to normal, to ordinary life, from times of pain. From times of joy. Return to baseline. This is how we can grasp hold of life in all its exuberant, indifferent, and terrible beauty.

Like the rise and fall of breathing, like the very world we are born into. Sunrise sweeps away night, summer loses itself in winter. Life is birth and death and new birth. Love and hatred. Dancing and heartbreak. Rhythms and seasons. And most of our journey is walking the flatland in between.

Lloyd Douglas, American author, speaks of this so eloquently. 

“Our life is like a land journey, too even and easy and dull over long distances across the plains, too hard and painful up the steep grades; But, on the summits of the mountain, you have a magnificent view- and feel exalted- and your eyes are full of happy tears- and you want to sing- and wish you had wings! And then, you can’t stay there, but must continue your journey- you begin climbing down the other side, so busy with your footholds that your summit experience is forgotten.”

Along the same line of thought comes this, from Eric G. Wilson:

“I for one am afraid that our American culture’s overemphasis on happiness at the expense of sadness might be dangerous, a wanton forgetting of an essential part of a full life. To desire only happiness in a world undoubtably tragic is to become inauthentic, to settle for unrealistic abstractions that ignore concrete situations. I am finally fearful of our society’s efforts to expunge melancholia from the system.”

“Without agitations of the soul,
would all of our magnificently yearning towers topple?
Would our heart-torn symphonies cease?”
-Eric G. Wilson

The Second Happiness Lie – Doing whatever makes you happy means a happy life.

But does this mindset limit and isolate us?

I hear this said by parents to their children: I just want you to be happy. I get it. Happiness is easy for everyone involved, including the parents.

Just do what makes you happy.
Get married to someone who makes you happy.
Find your happy place.

Psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, in an interesting happiness study on the ways happiness can hurt us, has found that too much positive emotion—and too little negative emotion—makes people inflexible in the face of new challenges. (*link below)

Looking only for happiness can keep you from finding your greatest fulfillment in life. From braving the struggle that would enable you to find your passion and purpose.

Happiness is a sign of satisfaction, says Scottish evangelist, Oswald Chambers.

“Happiness is a sign of satisfaction,
that is all,
and the majority of us can be satisfied on too low a level.”
-Oswald Chambers

The people who touch the world around them with beauty and love, and the people who effect great change, are not inspired by a life of ease and a blissfully happy soul. The art and music and literature that sucks you in and gives a voice to the unspeakable, is not born from only pursuing happiness, but from pursuing something greater than ourselves.

Robert Henri calls this striving a magnificent struggle, and says it is the originator of great art. Bertrand Russell says “the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness.”

This doesn’t always mean success. Great art is not always popular. Great artists, musicians, and writers have died unknown. Bertrand Russell said that success is only one ingredient in happiness. “Success can only be one ingredient in happiness, and is too dearly purchased if all the other ingredients have been sacrificed to obtain it.”

German philosopher, Friedrich Nietsche, shunned the happiness ideal and thought it a weak and futile approach to life.

“The secret for harvesting from existence
the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is:
to live dangerously!
Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

At first glance, I liked this idea. Instead of a “pursuit of happiness” he talks of “living dangerously”, and it seems to encourage bravery and fulfillment. But the longer I thought about the idea of “building your city on the slopes of Vesuvius”, the more one thought emerged: it encourages isolation.

Interestingly, Hitler was a great admirer of Friedrich Nietsche. He “built his city on the slopes of Vesuvius”, did he not? But his obsessive drive to conquer and rule the world was fueled by shattered lives, shattered dreams, and the blood of millions.

Which brings me to…

The Third Happiness Lie – Happiness begins with me.

What if it’s the opposite? What if happiness begins when I forget myself? This is perhaps the greatest truth I found. The pursuit of happiness, as it’s being sold today, has a tendency to begin with ME. Self-care. Self-love. Self-centeredness. This isolates us from the most meaningful experience of human life: connection.

Self-love for ever creeps out,
like a snake,
to sting anything which happens to stumble upon it.

– Lord Byron

As Lloyd Douglas writes in The Robe, “It was probably a mistake to pursue happiness; much better to create happiness; still better to create happiness for others. The more happiness you created for others the more would be yours-a solid satisfaction that no one could ever take away from you.”

English novelist, Charlotte Bronte, says in Jane Eyre that happiness lies in human relationships.

“There is no happiness like that
of being loved by your fellow-creatures,
and feeling that your presence
is an addition to their comfort.”
-Charlotte Bronte

There’s an elderly man who lives alone at the local nursing home. It’s a beautiful place, in the eyes of visitors. The view is spectacular. One day a visitor stood looking out over the beautiful valleys and rolling hills, and said to a nearby elderly man, sitting alone in his wheelchair, “Wow, you’re so lucky to have this view!” The man was silent a moment, looking at his beautiful view. Then he looked up and said, “You want to stay and enjoy it with me?”

The most beautiful view in the world may be only an emptiness to a lonely heart.

We are eternal souls. Perhaps this is where the greatest human joy and fulfillment is found – in relationships. Our link to infinity.

“To be happy in this world,
especially when youth is past,
it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual
whose day will soon be over,
but part of the stream of life flowing on
from the first germ
to the remote and unknown future.”
-Bertrand Russell

German writer, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, said the happiest man is “he who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own.”

I love Eleanor Roosevelt’s take on happiness:

“Someone once asked me what I regarded
as the three most important requirements for happiness.
My answer was:
A feeling that you have been honest with yourself
and those around you;
a feeling that you have done the best you could
both in your personal life and in your work;
and the ability to love others.”
– Eleanor Roosevelt

“All who joy would win must share it.
Happiness was born a twin.”
-Lord Byron

This doesn’t mean sacrificing who you are in the interests of others. Or you’ll become a doormat. And I’ve yet to find a more miserable person than a doormat. There’s a passive martyrdom about them that jangles the fibers of my soul.

“One should as a rule respect public opinion
in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation
and to keep out of prison,
but anything that goes beyond this
is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny,
and is likely to interfere with happiness
in all kinds of ways.”
-Bertrand Russell

Find your own path in life. And no need to convince others to follow. Each person’s pursuit, and passion, will look different. Bertrand Russell says, “Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.” Live on the slopes of Vesuvius if you want to. But just don’t build a city and drag the rest of us there.

David Grayson calls it being foursquare with the life we have chosen.

“Joy of life seems to arise
from a sense of being where one belongs…
of being foursquare with the life we have chosen.”
-David Grayson

Foursquare. Defined as being marked by boldness and conviction. Henry David Thoreau called it living deep.

“I did not wish to live what was not life-
living is so dear;
nor did I wish to practise resignation,
unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep
and suck out all the marrow of life.”
– Thoreau

And here is another happens gem, from Emerson:

“The purpose of life is not to be happy.
It is to be useful,
to be honorable,
to be compassionate,
to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

I stopped trying to be happy.

Happiness is a luxury. I’m learning to live in such a way that I create space for it, and let it go when it leaves. I embrace the things that bring it when they are in my life. Rewarding work. Travel. Rest. As David Grayson says in his gem of a book, Adventures in Contentment:

“Happiness…
she loves to see men at work.
She loves sweat, weariness, self sacrifice.
She will be found not in palaces,
but lurking in cornfields and factories;
and hovering over littered desks;
she crowns the unconscious head of the busy child.”
-David Grayson

There is happiness in travel, yes, It opens our eyes to the beautiful vibrances of different cultures, and yet draws our hearts together in recognition of our similarities. There is happiness in rest and quietness. Dietrich Boenhoffer writes that joy draws its nourishment from quietness. There is good in making time for what nourishes both body and soul. There is good in slowing down, in taking care of our health, in creating beauty, in living with less. These pursuits add joy and beauty to this place, to this hour.

But all the beautiful experiences, beautiful places, and self-care in the world cannot replace a mind at rest.

“A man who is always turned toward the outside,
thinking that his happiness lies outside him,
finally turns inward and discovers
that the source is within him.”
-Soren Kierkegaard

John Milton says it this way:

“The mind is its own place,
and in itself
can make a Heaven of Hell,
a Hell of Heaven.”
-John Milton

I think my favorite is this: Happiness is like a stray dog.

If you stare at it, or chase it, or command it to come, it will slink off and hide, and refuse to come near you. But when you stop chasing it, occupy yourself in some other pursuit, and ignore it, it begins to creep out. And when you tolerate it kindly, setting out food and water for it, but not making it the center of attention, it slowly creeps nearer. And before you realize it, it is there, sitting at your feet, quietly pressed against your leg. It knows where you are, and if it feels secure in your presence, it will return again. Often silently. And never in response to a demand.

“Happiness must happen,
and the same holds for success:
you have to let it happen
by not caring about it.”
-Victor Frankl

We create a space for happiness by releasing ourselves from the scars of a past we can’t change, and anxiety for a future we can’t control. We find it in gratitude for the imperfect, ordinary present.

“Gratitude bestows reverence,
allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies,
those transcendent moments of awe
that change forever how we experience life and the world.”
– John Milton

It’s not at the end of our pursuit. Instead, it finds us in moments throughout our pursuit… but we’re often so focused on the end goal of happiness, we completely miss it.

When you learn to become aware of it, stop. Breathe it in. Smile, and hold the moment, the day, close to your heart. Don’t let anyone take it from you, or make you feel guilty for being happy. Knowing it’s not permanent, not guaranteed, makes it all the more precious. When it leaves, let it go, like an embrace. Knowing it will come again, perhaps in a different form, but it will return to a heart that welcomes it, but does not demand it.

“One swallow does not make a summer,
neither does one fine day;
Similarly, one day
or brief time of happiness,
does not make a person entirely happy.”
-Aristotle

I’ll leave you with these stunningly written and introspective words on happiness by Jane Kenyon:

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Authors that inspired me with their different perspectives on happiness:

Victor Frankl – Man’s Search For Meaning
Bertrand Russell – The Conquest of Happiness
David Grayson – Adventures in Contentment
Robert Henri – The Art Spirit

*articles cited
Four Ways Happiness Can Hurt You

What the Declaration of Independence Really Means by Pursuit of Happiness