By Eugene Schlossberger
This first post is about happiness: how to be happy, what is happiness, and do
we make our own happiness? It opens the door to the following posts.
How to Be Happy
Why can’t I be happy,” asks a beautiful woman in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story. It should be so easy. Life should glitter like sea sparkle. “The mere sense of living is happiness enough,” says Emily Dickinson. But it isn’t. The hardest thing in the world is to just be happy. Too often, a happy face hides a troubled heart. All that stands between you and happiness is life. So how do we get there? How can we be happy in a world of sorrows?
The answer matters as much as anything in human life. “I just want to be happy,” people often say. Happiness is the goal of life, according to Aristotle, though he meant something like living well or flourishing (“eudaimonia,” in Greek). Happiness is the flutterfall of winter and the green blood of spring. But we don’t really know what happiness means or how to get there. I’m going to give you 9 precepts for being happy. We’ll explore each one in the following posts. There is no substitute for practical advice. But first I’m going to talk a little about what happiness is and whether we make our own happiness.
Happiness is not a feeling. Happiness is how we live. Ludwig Wittgenstein said the world of the happy person is a different one from the world of the unhappy person. Yes, the same streetcorner lamp sputters its light on the wet pavement and broken green glass. The same night honk hangs in the air like a lovesick goose. But that light can glisten with secret hope or limp across a weary street. That honk can be the death gasp of a broken promise or the giggle of gleeful fate. The soft drizzle can feel like small slaps of an indifferent world or the warm touch of a friend. Happiness is the world itself: To be happy is to live in a world worth cherishing. People are happy who collect memories but not regrets, who store seeds in their hearts, and bless the long shadows of twilight.
Is happiness found by seeking pleasure or by avoiding pain? Passionate attachment or serene detachment? Both ways of thinking have long histories and capture an essential feature of human life. On one hand, the human world is a world of loss and ruins. Everyone dies and everything crumbles. Pain and cruelty are everywhere, from agonizing disease, predators hunting prey, and governments torturing and bombing, to the thousand tiny hurts we inflict on one another. Pain and hurt are our constant companions. In such a world, Buddhists, Hindus, Stoics, and Christian ascetics concentrated on avoiding suffering through detachment, freedom from desire. If you can accept losing everything, then no loss will destroy you. Detachment (vairagya) from craving (tanha) frees us from suffering (duhka), they believe, and is the road to freedom and happiness. But we also live in a world of endless wonder, from the shy dance of sunlight on a dew-blessed spider’s web to the earth-cracking glory of Kilimanjaro, from the worn, wise hands of the dying to the first shuddering breath of babies, transcendent works of art to small acts of kindness. So, you can also think of life as about embracing joy and seeking good. The Epicureans filled their days with pleasure. For the early Epicureans, this meant conversation with friends in a garden. Later, it came to mean sex, food, and drink. In the romantic period, passion became the hallmark of life fully lived. Van Gogh said “I would rather die of passion than of boredom.” “Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate,” said Jon Bon Jovi. “Live life with abandon,” advises Oprah Winfrey. So, passionate abandon or serene detachment? Love life with fierce joy or love life enough to let it go?
Traditional Judaism sought a balance of both, a joyful but moderate attachment to life: beware envy and greed but “eat bread with joy and drink wine with a cheerful heart” (Ecclesiastes 9:7). We have to find a way to make this world our own, with all its flaws and charms, horrors and glories. We have to see ourselves in everything, in the crease of a shoe and the thousand delicate colors of an inch of old bark. The world has to be our home. We are not fully human unless we care deeply, laugh, and hurt. So I don’t think real human happiness lies in either detachment or partying. A life without passion is drab, but passion often leads to dumb choices and horrendous consequences. The Nazis and the Spanish Inquisition pursued their goals with unrelenting passion. But the dichotomy between reason and passion is a false one. Emotions are as rational or irrational as the people who have them. Be passionate about things that deserve your passion and realize your passions in ways that make sense. Live a life of rational passion. A perfect example of rational passion is Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. He was condemned to death, but not confined. His friends begged him to leave. They would provide for him in another city. He had only to get up and walk out. But his reason told him he had an obligation to obey the state, and, passionately committed to what he found true and right, he was willing to for die his conviction. Reason guided his passion, as powerful as life itself.
To be happy, to live well, is to realize the human potential in a way that is uniquely your own. It lies in five key elements: 1) a sense of moral and personal purpose (making some small difference in the things one cares deeply about), 2) cherishing all the tiny miracles of ordinary life, 3) sharing true intimacy with good people, and 4) keeping a wise perspective in which reason guides a loving heart. Finally, 5) a happy life is a life of values, things you hold to be good quite apart from yourself that are worth dedicating yourself to. Composing music and raising a child are worthwhile purposes. So is serving your vision of god, helping others with compassion, and teaching, among many others. A happy life dwells in the thousand wonders of ordinary life. And a happy life is a life of friends, family, and love.
So, do we make our own happiness, as people often claim? Or does our happiness depend on others? Like all good philosophical questions, the answer to both questions is “yes and no.” In many ways, Aeschylus is right that “happiness is a choice.” As Lincoln reportedly said, ““folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” There is always something in life worth cherishing. “We are all happy if we but knew it,” as Dostoyevsky reminds us.
But part of living a full human life is caring about others. We need to make a difference in the world and we need meaningful connections to others. And both of these depend, to some extent, on other people. Maybe it is possible to be happy as a total hermit. But it is difficult, and it leaves out so much of what makes us human. To give and receive love, to love someone worthy of love who cares deeply for you, is part of what defines a full human life. There are many forms of love, to be sure. And it is not impossible to be happy without that. But the happiness one enjoys is truncated, a small-scale model. And you cannot command love from others, or demand that the people you know be worthy of love in your eyes. Too many people are truly lonely. Again, there are many ways of making a difference in the world, in bringing to the world what you uniquely have to contribute. But there are too many Cassandras, too many who have something worthwhile to contribute but are ignored. Our own attitudes, what we bring from within to our own lives, makes a powerful difference. But so does the outside world. It’s a bit much to tell an Auschwitz inmate “you’re responsible for your own happiness.” Perhaps someone of great personal strength and inner resources can manage to find some happiness and joy even in Auschwitz. Such a person is a hero of living, a superhero of the soul. Most of us can’t be expected to be superheroes. And we are biochemical machines. We are not helpless victims of our condition—we are machines that, to some extent, can self-regulate. But telling someone suffering from depression to choose to be happy is both cruel and misguided.
So, here are the nine precepts for a happy life:
9 Precepts for a Happy Life
- Be happy with what you have. Remember that good is good enough.
- Pay attention to the five big elements of a happy life: Values, a sense of purpose (moral and personal), joy in everyday life [the miracle of the ordinary], rational passion and love, and meaningful connection to others. Cherish your friends
- Look to your values.
- Values generally count more than mere desires. Thrills fade but values endure. If you value integrity and desire a fancy car, it is a mistake to compromise your integrity to get the fancy car.
- Your sense of self-worth should come most importantly from how you measure up to your values, not from other people’s approval or any other yardstick. If your values are compassion, honesty, and knowledge, for example (perhaps like Einstein), then your self-worth should depend on how compassionate, honest, and dedicated to the knowledge you are, not on how rich you are, how many men or women chase you, whether other people approve of you, and so forth.
- Values should govern how you treat other people and how you choose people to be in your life.
- Find the value in life without being blind to all that is wrong.
- Lead a life of integrity. Be honest with yourself and with others. Take responsibility for yourself and be responsible to others.
- Think clearly. Be honest with yourself. Follow truth wherever it leads. Winning an argument is arriving at truth. It doesn’t matter who said it first. Think logically and objectively. Keep things in perspective. Does this make a real difference in your life or is it all about ego?
- Emotions are good guides when they are reasonable and good-hearted. But when they are vicious, envious, mean-spirited, unreasonable, or unfair, step back from them. Let those emotions play out in your mind—suppressed emotions are active volcanoes. But don’t let them guide you.
- Reciprocity. Don’t demand what you won’t give. Think about how it feels to be on the other side.
- People and circumstances vary. Not every way is ok, but usually several different ones are worthy of respect. Cherish legitimate differences. Be open to the many ways of being a good person and living a good life.
- Live in a world of moral beauty.
To learn what all this means and how it translates into practical advice for living, keep reading future posts.
Nothing that appears on this blog is meant to replace legal advice, therapy, or medical treatment. I am not providing legal, medical, or mental health advice. Always seek the advice of your own attorney or medical or mental health provider about specific questions concerning your specific health or legal issues.
