When it
comes right down to it, everyone just wants to be happy. According to the Dalai
Lama,
It is a
fact – a natural fact of life – that each one of us has an innate desire to
seek happiness and to overcome suffering.
Our need for
happiness is so great that, once we remove pursuits aimed at staying fed,
staying warm, and caring for our children, we do most of what we do to be
happy.
The
philosopher Aristotle said that people choose happiness for its own sake, not
to achieve some other purpose. If you have true happiness, you do not need
anything else.
The wish for
happiness is basic to us. Why is this? What is it about happiness that makes us
want it so much? We want it because being happy makes an enormous positive
contribution to life. The benefits are so great that you may find that aiming
for happiness is a lot more important than many of the other things you do.
Let us look
at some of the benefits of being happy:
• It is true
that good relationships can make people happy. However, evidence suggests that
happy people are better at establishing good relationships.
• Happy
people are more successful in life. Success does not always make you happy, but
happiness can make you successful.
• The
evidence shows that happy people are healthier, both physically and
emotionally. Happy people live longer. 2
• Happy
people are creative. People who worry excessively about what they do narrow
their focus, while happiness leads to an expansive creative mood.3
In short,
happiness, by itself, improves nearly every aspect of life. It is the glue that
holds a good life together.
In addition,
happiness may be “adaptive.” Adaptive behavior helps us perform better in the
world. In other words, happy people may be better able to cope with whatever
life throws at them. Perhaps we instinctively know this and seek happiness as a
guide to living successfully.
Beyond
living longer and healthier lives, we may seek happiness for other reasons.
Many people believe that each of us exists for a specific purpose. Although there
are many beliefs about that purpose, nobody can say with certainty what it is.
However, perhaps as we align our lives with our purpose, we become happier.
Said another way, perhaps the closer we get to true happiness, the closer we
are to realizing the purpose for our time on Earth. I do not know the nature of
that purpose, but I believe that happiness is vital to it.
If happiness
underlies and animates our purpose, then aiming for it seems a reliable way of
moving toward that purpose. In other words, if you let what makes you happy be
your guide, there is a good chance that you are on your path to fulfilling your
purpose.
Irrespective
of the good reasons for being happy, we want happiness. It is the way we are.
All by itself, it makes life worth living.
One of my
favorite songs from 2014 is (no surprise) “Happy,” by Pharrell Williams. One of
the lyrics is “Happiness is the truth!” The man is definitely on to something
here.
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