The search for happiness
BILL TONER SJ :: A single day can offer us a roller-coaster relationship with happiness. Getting out of bed is rarely the happiest part of the day, but after a hot shower and a decent breakfast, things can begin to look up. Then we back our car out and damage the paintwork of a neighbour’s car, – definitely an unhappy event. Drive to work, little traffic, sun coming up, mood improving. Switch on computer, e-mail from Revenue threatening dire penalties unless documents received by the following Tuesday, when we planned to be in Achill. And so it goes Life sometimes feels that we are “running a gauntlet”, – the original meaning being a military punishment of running between two rows of men armed with sticks.
“Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”, – these are the three basic God-given rights proclaimed in the American Declaration of Independence. The word ‘pursuit’ is interesting. It suggests that happiness is an elusive thing, – we have a right to pursue it, but it cannot be guaranteed.
The word ‘happiness’ comes from an Old English word, ‘hap’, meaning chance, fortune, or luck; we can still see it in the word ‘mishap’. Happiness, or the lack of it, is largely determined by outside events, events beyond our control, accidents. We can’t manufacture a happy life for ourselves. We can be unlucky in love, or have our house blown away in a storm, or lose the money we invested in a ‘sure thing’. And we can be born or raised with an amount of ‘baggage’ – poor health, inferiority complex, impulsive or depressive personality. There is no magic wand that will wave these away. The American writer H.D. Thoreau famously stated that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”.
We need to give names to the kinds of happiness we experience at different levels of consciousness. The deepest one is often called ‘joy’. For instance, people of faith may believe that God loves them unconditionally. That conviction can become the unshakeable bedrock of their lives, and a deep reservoir of joy. “Our hearts ache, but we always have joy” (2 Cor. 6,10). Joy, which is mentioned about 150 times in the Bible, is not something that we can just switch on. “Joy is a gift from God and is a strength to those who have it” (Neh. 8:10).
For St. Ignatius of Loyola this joy was a hallmark of spiritual strength. He refers to it as ‘consolation’, an occasion when the soul of the person “is inflamed with love of its creator and Lord” and experiences an interior delight that fills the soul with peace and quiet. For Ignatius, consolation can be an indication that a person has done the right thing in the eyes of God and has responded to an impulse of his grace. Yet, Ignatius does not see this consolation as a lasting state. He asks us to consider how we will conduct ourselves “during the time of ensuing desolation”. He too was aware of the roller-coaster of emotion that colours our daily life.
Joy can also be found in the experience of human love. In his seminal book, Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl describes how his love for his wife, Tilly, gave him a reason to go on living during three years in Nazi concentration camps. Yet, in human love, there is an element of precariousness present. God is constant, but humans are not always constant. And, sadly, death can take them away from us, as Frankl was to find after the war. Yet love, even if it is fragile, lifts us outside ourselves and our own narrow comforts. It can give our life meaning and let us know what joy tastes like.
In contrast with joy, happiness has been described as what a person experiences here and now. It can be a relatively short-lived feeling of contentment, coming and going, often dependent on external factors such as fine weather, good food, or good company. Personal achievement is also a source of happiness, – whether it be from completing a half-marathon, building a wall, or passing an exam. Happiness is also affected by health, – even if we only have a bad cold nothing can make us really happy.
The dominant culture gives us a constant message that we should be happy. TV and magazine ads try endlessly to persuade us that the key to a happy life is a new medication, a new brand of food, a new car, a foreign holiday on a beach with lots of other happy people, a different service provider, and so on. It is easy to conclude that normal people are happy and that if you are not happy there is something the matter with you.
Author Sally Rooney has done a great service in her novels in portraying just how unhappy the tangled emotions of outwardly ‘normal people’ can make them. She offers no neat solutions or happy endings. Her main characters all seem destined to struggle on for ever in their complex relationships, experiencing moments of happiness while shouldering their daily crosses.
It is probably a mistake to make happiness the main goal in life. It is better just to try to make good decisions, and to be a kind person, who tries to see the good in people. Happiness may come as a bonus. Unhappiness is unpleasant, but it is not a measure of a person’s life.
That said, for the person of faith, there is always the hope of being given God’s deeper, mysterious, gift of joy. Otherwise, why would Jesus have said, “these things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full”. We may feel unworthy to pray for this joy. Yet some of the greatest prayers in the Bible were composed by King David in the midst of his unhappiness and guilt. This is a man who sent one of his best soldiers, Uriah, into a fierce battle to be killed, to hide the fact that he had made Uriah’s wife, Bathsheba, pregnant when Uriah was away at the war. He then took Bathsheba as his wife. “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord”, he cried, consumed with remorse (Ps.130). Yet David still lived in hope of attaining joy, “Fill me with joy and gladness…Restore to me the joy of your salvation” (Ps.51). We have only to open our Bibles to be able to say the same prayers and live in the same hope.
