Happiness

 

 

We all want to know how to be more happy right?! A recent NYT article on the subject noted that people were happiest when having sex or out in nature and perhaps doubly so while having sex in nature!  Working and caring for children were low on the list of happiness indicators. Money once we have enough for our basic needs, like a decent and safe place to live and send our children to school, nutritious food, health insurance, doesn’t lead to much more happiness.   

From the spiritual view, measuring happiness misses the point of what we more deeply long for which is not really happiness but contentment which gives us a fuller and richer experience of well-being. Assessing an experience for its happiness quotient based on how it makes us feel in the moment misses how our experiences of the events of our lives change and ripen overtime.  What may have been challenging and even despairing in the moment can turn out to be an experience that overtime bring us joy, courage, fulfillment.

While eating an ice-cream would make me happy while I was eating it, a few hours later the experience would be forgotten and make no imprint on my life.   Studying for a hard exam, would likely make me feel anxious, tired, hopeful, despairing in the moment.  The day after the exam or ten years after, I might feel grateful for the chance to have studied something so rigorously, to apply myself and learn a new skill.  

Challenges help us to mature while moments of happiness may just be a sugar rush.   No one is happy when loved one is ill or dying.  And yet to have the chance to hold a loved one’s hand during times of difficulty, to listen to a friend’s sorrow, to open our hearts up to the sorrow of the refugee gives our lives purpose in ways that momentary happiness could not.  Happiness after all is not the main point of our lives.  Rather it is finding our purpose, our meaning, our path, our aliveness, our love, our fearlessness, and courage.