Happiness

Saint Augustine says that we all seek happiness, and so must all have an idea of what happiness is somewhere in our mind or in our soul. How do we know to yearn for happiness, if we have never been happy? We must be remembering happiness from somewhere or some time in the past. Is happiness one of the Ideas of Plato, that we are born knowing and spend our lives remembering? According to Augustine, happiness is the love of truth, which he equates with the love of God. It is not clear what he includes in this “truth,” or what he excludes. Does he include the horrible facts of life – disease, death, hunger, pain? Or does he refer to a higher Truth only?

Orhan Pamuk doubts that the point of life is to seek happiness. He wonders if only those who are unhappy have led worthwhile, full, or important lives. Being unhappy presumably makes you search for happiness, and so makes you act, either externally or internally. Or perhaps being unhappy is the result of a worthwhile life – it means that you did something, either externally or internally.

I believe that people are genetically predisposed to levels of happiness. Some people seem happy, regardless of what happens. They have disappointments, they go through periods of stress and upheaval and sadness, but they are generally happy. My grandmother was such a person. In her case, I thought it was because of her firm faith in God – this agrees with Saint Augustine. But I know of another woman, my own age, who seems incredibly happy most of the time, and she has never referred to God or faith. It is possible that these people are simply putting forth a happy front, or are repressing negative feelings and being falsely happy. But I think that they really are happy in their lives. Other people seem congenitally unhappy. No matter their experiences and their situations, they are unhappy, despite striving for happiness. They think a lot, while the happy people don’t seem to think that much. At any rate, the happy people don’t dwell on unhappy things. Is that because they are happy, or is that the cause of their happiness?

Scientists say that our genes dictate a lot about our lives – our health, our weight, our ability to gain or lose weight. We can change our behavior and our health, but only to a certain extent. It seems possible to me that we have a similar relationship with our level of happiness. We can create circumstances and situations that should lead to happiness, if we all have the same capability for happiness. But that does not mean that we will all be happy in those circumstances.

We all search for happiness. That much is obvious from the tabloids, magazines, and advertisements. “Buy this product and you will be happy.” “Lose weight and you will be happy.” “Sustain this way of living and you will be happy.” Society has one standard of living that will produce happiness, according to it – married, 2.5 children, dog, SUV, big house in the suburbs, thin, busy, etc. Most people try to achieve that standard of living. But do people find happiness? Some do, and some do not. If we were truly happy with what we have, we would not spend more and more money and more and more time trying to become happier. The question that most people ask is “what is happiness?” Perhaps the question should be “is happiness the goal of life?”

If we just live and then die with no further existence, then we might as well be happy while we are alive. But if we cannot attain happiness, then the struggle to find it and the knowledge that we have failed will make us even more unhappy. We would be happier if we stopped trying to be so unhappy. If we were to truly accept ourselves as we are, then we could be happy, or at least not unhappy.

So the secret to happiness is to stop searching for it, to stop focusing on it, and to accept ourselves and our lives as they are. How very Zen. Is the concept of an Ideal then counter to happiness? Doesn’t this mean that belief in God results in unhappiness because it produces discontent arising from the failure of attaining some level of the Ideal in our own lives? Many people who believe in God are happy, presumably because they also believe in his love and acceptance of us as we are, and so they do not feel the pressure to attain the Ideal. That is based on a certain conception of God. Where does religion’s focus on sin come into all this? Saint Augustine thought a lot about sin, very particular sins, but he also thought that he could attain happiness via a love of God and a love of truth. Part of that truth must be that he was a sinner – did he also love that? He wanted to not be a sinner. He wanted God to take away his sins, not just from the great balance sheet, but from him entirely. He wanted to be free from sin. So although he knew what happiness was and had attained it through love of truth and God, he still yearned to improve himself, and so must have had moments of discontent, frustration, and general unhappiness. If happiness is love of God and truth, then is unhappiness discontent with God and truth?

I believe that to be happy, I must accept myself as I am. But I would like to be different in certain ways. I would like to eat and live more healthfully. I would like to work more efficiently. I would like to be more connected to society. I would like a dog. I would like a partner. But these all entail change. Some entail very hard change. In order to exact that change, don’t I have to accept my unhappiness? So to attain my ideal me, which I believe would make me happier, I have to be unhappy. To be happy, I have to put up with who I am. Is happiness accepting of one’s inherent soul, rather than of one’s current physical circumstances? That would allow people to be happy but also to work for betterment. But if one cannot change one’s physical circumstances, one would never be happy. Physical circumstances are important. So I don’t think that is it.

It seems like the secret to being happy is to be happy. But don’t push it.