The Pursuit of Happiness
“I feel that life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. Those are the two categories. The horrible are like terminal cases, blind people, crippled. I don't know how they get through life. It's amazing to me. And the miserable is everyone else. So when you go through life, you should be thankful that you're miserable, because you’re very lucky to be miserable.” - Woody Allen
Somewhere along the way, we picked up the idea that the purpose of life is to achieve personal happiness. This is reenforced through an endless stream of advertisements, entertainment, and pop psychology fads. Some people are looking for something more substantial like fulfillment or significance, but it’s all roughly the same thing. Whether or not we consciously believe it, we often act as if the purpose of our life is to pursue what we think will make us whole.
It’s strange this goal is so common, considering how anemic and microscopic it is. Who cares if Joshua Blair is happy? There is brokenness, poverty, and injustice in the world. There are scientific breakthroughs yet to be discovered, beauty yet to be created, pain, corruption, and political, spiritual, and environmental problems threatening our existence. But no, I will devote myself to being happy.
This is not only preposterous, it’s also impossible. It’s well-documented that humans do not achieve and sustain happiness, least of all through external circumstances. Resources and opportunities can lift us out of a certain level of misery, but they won’t bring us into happiness. As our prosperity climbs, our concerns don’t go away – they just shift to less urgent or significant matters. We used to care about surviving, then thriving, and at a certain point, we are concerned with an infinitesimal increase in comfort or convenience.
We aren’t happy that every previous level is going well. In fact, we don’t see it at all. Things that are working are invisible.* I don’t fully appreciate my income until I lose my job and I don’t notice my back has been functioning all these years until it starts hurting. I think, “If only my back stopped hurting, I would be happier.” But this isn’t exactly right. I’m not happier if I’m healthy; I’m just more miserable if I’m not.
As soon as something along the line breaks, we are rapidly propelled to that level of concern. My biggest concern might be the length of the Starbucks line. This will genuinely frustrate me, but if I learn the warheads are on their way and we all have minutes to live, my coffee situation is put into perspective. An almost infinite number of things could always be worse for us, and are certainly worse for others around the world. But no matter where we are in life, we are always concerned with something.**
Even if circumstances make us momentarily happy, they will either become quickly invisible or eventually break. Either way, we can never arrive or remain at a place of utopia. If we did, Dostoevsky suggests we would immediately become bored and destroy it just so we would have something to fix again. We think we want “not a care in the world,” but sitting poolside in paradisal retirement with a margarita in one hand and a sugar baby in the other becomes insufferably boring quicker than one would imagine. We aren’t toy dogs designed to enjoy the penthouses of Malibu. We are working dogs. We are burdened with work, but far more burdened without it.
I believe we are unable to achieve complete happiness because it is not the reason for which we were created. It’s like a woodpecker forever frustrated by its inability to swim. It can’t swim because it wasn’t designed to. It was made to fly.
Ecclesiastes describes Solomon’s pursuit of happiness. Though he had vast resources at his command, Solomon did not find happiness in money, sex, wisdom, or accomplishments. And contrary to what many Christians say, he didn’t find it in God, either. Because God does not exist to make us happy. He does not exist for us at all – we exist for Him. Our lives only make sense when they are aligned with Him.
It’s not just that we’re chasing something small and unattainable; our entire paradigm needs to be flipped. As I have said before, we are not the protagonists of our own story. My life is not ultimately about me. God is telling a Story throughout human history, and He decides how we will be a part of it. Our lives are not our own; we belong to God to do with as He sees fit.***
A former pastor of mine said we are not buckets to be filled with blessings, but pipes through which the love and grace of God is poured into the lives of those around us. That’s why trying to live as a bucket, trying to fill up self, never works. We were designed to be conduits of God’s grace. We should not be asking, “What can God do for me?” or even, “What can I do for God?” The real question is, “What is God doing in me and through me?”
This may sound grim and stoic, but I think it’s the opposite. The futile pursuit of happiness is forever frustrating. The pursuit of our intended purpose is freeing. In God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis writes: “If you think of this world as a place intended simply for our happiness, you find it quite intolerable; think of it as a place of training and correction, and it’s not so bad. Imagine a set of people all living in the same building. Half of them think it is a hotel, the other half think it is a prison. Those who think it a hotel might regard it as quite intolerable, and those who thought it was a prison might decide that it was really surprisingly comfortable. So that what seems the ugly doctrine is one that comforts and strengthens you in the end.”
When we pursue personal happiness or fulfillment as a goal, we are woodpeckers trying to swim and pipes trying to be filled. When we see ourselves and our purpose for what they are, we may stumble upon bits of happiness along the way. But even when we don’t, even when our backs hurt and the warheads are on their way, we can pursue what we were created for. That’s better than happiness.
J.
*I don’t seem to have any original thoughts that weren’t lifted from C.S. Lewis, or in this case, Dr. Jordan Peterson.
**It’s worth noting that the practice of gratitude serves the dual function of making the invisible visible and putting champagne problems into perspective.
***1 Corinthians 6:20, Ephesians 2:10
May 8, 2023