Many moons ago a sibling asked me why I was investing so much of my time and energy searching for life’s meaning. “It doesn’t get you anywhere, it’s not making you any happier,” or words to that effect.
Oh but it will make me happy, I insisted, I just need to work harder at it. After all, it wasn’t as if the rest of the world was any happier.
Turns out we both were right. The search for self, awakening, enlightenment (use whatever term you want) doesn’t make you any happier. And the rest of the world isn’t finding happiness either.
After years of searching it’s clear that humanity’s search for lasting happiness is a fool’s errand, no different than imagining committed focus and effort can make a flipped coin forever come up heads. Ain’t going to happen, the whole duality thing. Want happiness? Then you’d better be prepared for plenty of its alternative.
Most of us know this, of course, but it doesn’t stop us from trying. Every new love will be the best and most lasting of all loves, that fresh wad of cash will be instrumental to a lasting peace, and so on. And then we bicker with that new love or find ourselves needing still more cash and on goes the search.
Our days are adjudged as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on this happiness barometer, but even on the very best comes the mind’s whisper that while this day may indeed have been terrific it takes with it another day of life, brings us that much closer to death, that we must strive even harder to pack as much happiness as possible into what little time we have left. Again, a fool’s errand.
Each of us, I think, has a bit of Siddhartha in us, our lives spent test-driving various approaches to happiness – aestheticism, nihilism, materialism, spiritualism, pick your ism – only to discover that none of these really works. We never find that lasting sense of happiness.
If we are fortunate, however, there arises a faint glimmer of recognition that perhaps – just perhaps – there is something to those ancient mystical traditions, the ones that tell us that life really is suffering and the only way out is to recognize you were never in it. That you and I are nothing more than a case of mistaken identity, waves imagining themselves to be separate and apart from the infinite ocean of existence from which we arise.
Then it is up to us to look for ourselves, to see that there really is nothing separating ‘me’ from the tree upon which I gaze; that that tree is, in fact, nothing more than a mental concept and when the concept goes so goes the tree with it. Which is to say that suffering (or happiness), too, are but concepts as is the he or she who is doing all that suffering or enjoying all that happiness.
So perhaps you and I are not, in fact, waves on the ocean but the ocean itself, existence rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, in ceaseless experience of itself. And if that is true, who is it that suffers or searches for happiness, who is it that is born or dies?
I’ve got to disagree with this one dude! (There’s good research on things that actually DO help people find and create long term happiness!)
You said “The search for self, awakening, enlightenment (use whatever term you want) doesn’t make you any happier. And the rest of the world isn’t finding happiness either.” you’re somewhat right. Those things don’t lead to happiness.
The main point is this:
If you’re trying to become happier, as a goal, the happiness will slip through your fingers.
But if the goal is to great value, make a difference, and live a meaningful and purposeful life (which will likely include suffering), the byproduct is increased happiness. In other words, don’t go for happiness. Go for meaning and purpose. Then, you’ll have lasting higher-levels of happiness.
I don’t believe the existential crisis stuff (“So perhaps you and I are not, in fact, waves on the ocean but the ocean itself, existence rising and falling, ebbing and flowing, in ceaseless experience of itself. And if that is true, who is it that suffers or searches for happiness, who is it that is born or dies?”) is likely to make you happier… I’ve not seen any research to suggest that attempts to figure out the truth of our existence is productive, or leads to a more meaningful or productive life.
Hey, you’re not allowed to disagree with me. That makes me unhappy! 🙂
You raise some interesting points and obviously I’m writing from my own perspective AND from what I’ve gleaned from gazillions of hours invested in mystical/spiritual teachings.
Happiness is subjective, entirely defined by its owner. Plenty of people in the world who have meaning in their lives and still jump off bridges; others who are living in cardboard boxes under those bridges who keep muddling through.
I think we both can agree that ANY search/quest for happiness is doomed to failure (how it’s sought – through money, fame, enlightenment – is irrelevant; the search itself is the dooming factor).
Where we diverge is in thinking that creating value or finding meaning is going to leave one happier. I’ve met lots of people in the nonprofit world who are very much dedicated to doing great works. Often times, however, their personal lives are in disarray – it’s just that the story they’re telling themselves is one of “I’m fulfilled and happy because I do these things.”
Ultimately I think any mind that imagines itself separate and alone in an existence bookended by birth and death can’t ever find a lasting form of happiness. The collapse (or seeing through) of the self also doesn’t lead to eternal happiness – it eliminates the requirement altogether. Which is why those who, across the millennia, have reported awakening, speak of profound bliss beyond the pale of ordinary human imagination. They don’t ‘experience’ love, for example, there is a recognition that they ARE love. As Robert Adams wrote in Silence of the Heart, “Take the conditioned love you experience as a human, multiply it by a million-billion times, and you’ll get some inkling of what this love is. The human mind cannot being to grasp it.”
Lastly, I’m in total agreement with you: The quest for existential anything also doesn’t lead to happiness (I’m living proof of it). It’s just another target like money, sex, etc. A dog chasing its tail.
Ok. So now I’m confused.
I thought I understood (and agree with) your statement: “Happiness is subjective, entirely defined by its owner.”?
But you go on to say, “Where we diverge is in thinking that creating value or finding meaning is going to leave one happier.”
Happiness is subjective, and defined/experienced by “its owner.” I agree with that, but we’re supposed to be disagreeing, aren’t we?!
You’re right that there are lots of people who do great works, who have lives in significant disarray. But it’s not as much the “doing meaningful things” as it is “feeling the impact of doing meaningful things” that creates happiness.
Bottom line, I’m not sure how you can disagree with the fact that people ARE happier when doing good deeds for meaningful/purposeful reasons, either from a logical standpoint (you said its subjective) or from a research perspective (there are decades of solid scientific and spiritual data that support this fact).
Maybe the confusion is over the word happy. Damn semantics. They muddle all the good arguments…