Choose Meaning over Happiness

Happiness seems such a wonderful place to visit, even better to abide in. The world is full of happy pills, happy places, happy promises. No sane mind would argue against happiness, surely. If we all could just be happy, everything would be fine. Wouldn’t it? You won’t find me inveighing against happiness. Indeed, it is even in the Declaration of Independence of the United States, and where could a happier place be than in such a nation? “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” it says, right there in black and white. Can’t argue with that. While scholars suggest that the word happiness as used by Jefferson in that time and place and for that specific topic means the right to pursue the course of life one wishes, ours surely is still a culture devoted to the pursuit of happiness.

Or is it that I have failed to read the right self-help books, those that promise five easy steps will take me there or thirty days of this or that will lead me into the blessed place? Have I failed to apply those ready recommendations with insufficient alacrity, devotion, and rigor, or have I suffered a dilatory will, a slothful indolence, or perhaps I am to sup only from a sophomoric susurrus of cynicism?

Or is it possible that happiness is simply the latest in a pathetic parade of palliative panaceas to emanate from a culture that longs to be ahistorical, to forget what must be remembered, that is too busy with trivia to be bothered with all this stuff? Our religions have, by and large, lost the capacity to link people to depth, to mystery. Capitalism and communism are systems that in their quite similar ways are generated by people who game the system and privilege the few. No institution is not compromised by self-interest and psychopathology. So where does that leave us?

As a youth, I believed with all the naiveté and sincerity of youth that if I read enough, learned enough, and figured enough out, I would arrive at some sunlit plane where, free from conflicts and compromise, I would be in charge of my life and happy. While I have been blessed more than most souls on this planet and am daily mindful of that gift, I learned early that achieving one’s goals always leaves one hungry for the next level. If one is good, two must be better, right? I told myself that my goal was never money or power, but a sense of completion, of sustained satisfaction. Little did I know then that such an achievement would itself be a form of hell, for all closed systems are engines of boredom, stultification, and spiritual death.

So today I submit to you that the happiness metric is a poor measure of a life. Happiness that is in any way based on denial, distraction, or ignorance is an affront to the soul and its depth. In my view, what abides is meaning. But what is meaning?

The philosopher concluded that the most sustained pleasure available is not of the senses but philosophy itself. He may not be far off. While philosophy is not everyone’s first choice for pleasure, one suspects Epicurus concluded that the state of one’s mind is perhaps the key to this question. If philosophy provides continuing enterprise and continuing discovery, it might thereby bring continuing pleasure.

My spin on this issue is that the way we attain some sustained satisfaction is in fact linked to our attitudes. Surely, Gautama, who became the Buddha, one who “sees” through the delusions of desire, was on the same track. He suggested that to become “no-minded,” to relinquish attachment to our desires, and to be wholly present to every moment is a far better way to attain satisfaction in the experience of this quite brief life journey. I certainly have acquired some corrective ideas from his thoughts, but I remain, for better or for worse, a creature of desire. Some of those desires are tangible and concrete and others quite abstract, but I do not forswear them. They are, finally, who I am. We are desire, Eros, and Eros is a god, the youngest because renewed daily in all movements of life, and the oldest because central to the fundaments of all life-forms. I also forswear any promises of an afterlife that offers to make all this mess acceptable. If there is an afterlife, then it is not this life, the one I inhabit, and if it exists, then it would so radically transform life as we know it that it remains incomprehensible. I really doubt that state exists, and I no longer long for it. What I do long for is an experience of this life that I would not trade for eternity in those elysian fields. And I can report that I have had such moments here on this sordid planet.

If happiness is the goal, then everything becomes contextual. To the thirsty person, a glass of water is happiness, though a flood is disaster. To the frightened person, the moment of rescue is happy, until the next peril emerges. And so on. Happiness is transient, but meaning abides.

But what is meaning, or what is the meaning of meaning?

Is not meaning so contextual, so idiosyncratic that every person, every hour will provide a new definition? Absolutely. Meaning is individual and contextual. As we all know, two people can have the same encounter, and one is bored or frightened, while the other is exalted, moved to tears. We cannot say to anyone else that this painting is meaningful, this music worth your devotion, this concept worth your life. And why not? Because meaning is an organ of the soul. The decisive arbiter is the soul, the psychological reality in which our lives unfold.

The more we give ourselves to the security of the known path, the more acceptable we may feel, but something in us does not accept this bad-faith arrangement. The more we are part of comforting consensus, the less we feel ourselves. The more we find approval from without, the more the psyche has to withdraw approval, until we feel drained, burned out, and depressed. In the unconscious pursuit of happiness, the soul finds aridity, one-sidedness, and a narrowing of focus. In the experience of meaning, we are asked to trust something deep within. We all know that. We all knew that as children, but given our powerlessness and lack of overt alternatives, we all learned to brush aside these internal promptings.

What excuse, then, do we have today? We are not powerless. We have learned an amazing amount about the world, about ourselves, about what works for us and what doesn’t, what abides and what is ephemeral. What excuse then, today? Have we not all learned that the violation of that which lies so deeply within us, this inner voice, this inner certainty, this inner support, keeps showing up, despite our disdain, collusion, cowardice, and flights from the large?