A few years ago, I wrote a book
It was called Lasting Happiness – in search of deeper meaning and fulfilment. It was the outcome of many years of running a course called The Happiness Course, which took me around the country and beyond. My aim was to present an alternative to the dominant narrative in our culture, i.e. that if you possess enough health and wealth (and pleasant experiences), you’ll end up happy – hopefully. Actually, this storyline has proved to be pretty elusive, but the trouble is that most of us aren’t quite sure what else to go for.
A different picture
So, I attempt to paint a different picture, one that looks to different sources and resources – especially relationships and a tangible sense of meaning and purpose in life. You can get the book from the publisher (Darton Longman and Todd) or simply via Amazon.
In Relationary we’ve started to record some podcasts that seek to unpack the book, starting of course with the Introduction. Here though is a summary of that chapter, to give you to a feel of what it’s all about.
Lasting Happiness – Introduction
Everyone wants to be happy – right?
Of course. But the odd thing is that happiness seems to mean different things to different people. You can be happy enjoying your favourite drink, but how does that compare with the experience of rediscovering a long-lost friend you haven’t seen for thirty years! And if happiness is all about feeling good, what happens when you’re not feeling so great? Happiness is such a catch-all generalist word.
It turns out that centuries ago the word happy simply meant ‘lucky’ (think ‘happen’, ‘perhaps’ or ‘haphazard’), which sounds a bit random – how we feel when things ‘happen’ to go just right. We don’t have much control over such situations, and that leaves a lot open to chance.
Pursuing happiness – or pleasure
Not that that stops us pursuing happiness. On the contrary, our culture seems to be obsessed with it. You might sum all that up with the three words health, wealth and happiness (or pleasure). If we have enough of these, especially materially, then all will go well. But for some time, this narrative of The Good Life has worn rather thin, although no one seems to know what the alternative is.
Two contrasting pathways
So, in the book, we take a journey towards lasting happiness, and ask whether a life based on those Three Words will get us there. Or maybe it won’t. At this point three other words emerge: relationships, meaning and fulfilment. Picture a circle, with a line down the middle, making two halves. On the left are “Health, wealth and pleasure”, on the right, “Relationships, meaning and fulfilment”. They stand in stark contrast to each other, as do lives founded on them.
Pursuing something else
Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s search for meaning, sums it up well. Frankl was a psychiatrist who endured several years in Auschwitz death camp, and later founded a new type of therapy, Logotherapy, based on his view that pursuing meaning is the most important foundation for a fulfilled life. Here’s a quote from the book:
Don’t aim at success. The more you aim at it the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued. You have to let happiness happen by not caring about it. In the long-run it will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it.”
The apostle Paul took a similar view when he wrote, “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.” (Philippians 4:11-12). That sounds a lot like lasting happiness, but it’s worth pointing out that Paul’s route there involved many experiences that most of us would consider anything but “happy”.
So we’re already beginning to travel beyond our culture’s prevailing narrative, touching on less “happy” or “pleasant” experiences. Let’s see where the journey takes us.
What makes you happy?
Here’s a simple reflection that I’ve used many times in groups. What would be your response to the question, “What makes you happy?” When I pose that question to groups, I have always found the vast majority of replies to focus on personal relationships (that’s number one) or meaningful activities (number two). My conclusion? The pursuits that make us happy are largely uncomplicated, unsophisticated and inexpensive and tend to focus on people and meaningful undertakings. That puts most of our desires firmly in the circle’s right-hand-side, namely relationships, meaning and fulfilment. So how come we spend so much of our time, money and energy pursuing the left-hand-side goals? Are we listening to the wrong voices? The book picks up this very question.
I hope that I’ve whetted your appetite. See what you make of our podcast and the book itself, and let us know what you think.