Do Not Make Happiness Your Aim

If you make happiness your aim, you will likely not attain it. Happiness comes as a by- product of something else, which it turns out is even more important to you than happiness itself.

Dennis Prager offers six values more important than happiness, which when you seek after, you are likely to attain happiness, life satisfaction as a gift. Along with them, I offer some comments to flesh out their meaning:

1. Passionate and meaningful pursuits. Great passion and a vibrant vision of value grant your life meaning and motive power through which to attain true happiness. You will of course also pass through times of sorrow—for the source of your sorrow is almost always also the source of your joy. You cannot have one without the potential of the other.

It is important to find and develop more than one passion, so you will have something that is always working, something always on the stove of your conscious scheming and imagining. And the greater the intrinsic value of our passion, the greater the likelihood of attaining happiness as a by-product. So for example, a passion for helping the homeless can bring a more intense sense of personal satisfaction than a passion for televised sports.

2. Depth. Depth has to do with gaining maturity, almost invariably through struggle. We struggle to grow psychologically, spiritually, emotionally, morally and intellectually. The problem is we tend to seek pleasure and comfort rather than depth of person and character. To gain greater depth, pain is necessary. As I wrote:

“Much of your pain does not reach consciousness. Be thankful that from your depths the full agony of growth is not to be felt.

“Pain is a hidden miracle. For its fingers shall hollow a small cup into a hallowed chalice.

And when the wine comes, you shall but pity those whose cups are easily filled. They will not know your ecstasy. Yet they too will be fulfilled.”

3. Wisdom. Wisdom concerns understanding how the world works, as well as how to find a course which will be both successful and moral. Wisdom cannot be learned from books, but from actual living; it is less a knowledge than an understanding from experience, and with that an acceptance of life as it is.

4. Greater Understanding of Yourself and Life. Building on attaining wisdom is gaining of clarity about who you are and what your life consists of. Regardless of how you reach it, one of life’s greatest goals is that of gaining an “enlightenment” sufficient to satisfy the hunger to apprehend life’s meaning and purpose, who and where you are in the scheme of things.

5. Goodness. Doing good is more important than being happy. People who make doing good for others and leading a moral life their disciplined aim will attain far greater peace of mind, sense of self-worth, and life satisfaction than those who keep looking for happiness, as if it were something to be possessed as an end in itself.

6. Pursuit of the Transcendent. The greatest pursuit is to experience the Transcendent. Religion has been termed our “ultimate concern,” and in two senses: beyond life’s final horizon and as the foundation for living today. Those who connect with the Absolute attain as gift a peace which fully satisfies, and a happiness which cannot be put into words. Simply stated, it means to be grounded in that which is eternal.