“To strive for wealth and have no capacity for enjoyment is to be like the bald man who struggles to collect combs.” – Anthony de Mello
What is happiness?
Any useful discussion on the topic begins by answering that question, and when we look around at the common happiness wisdom, the answer ‘aint so clear.
So maybe we should start with what happiness isn’t:
1. Pleasure.
ie: Momentary hits of good feeling, usually from food, entertainment, sex, insert your favorite vice here.
Pleasure makes a fine seasoning, but a terrible meal — in small doses it adds spice to life, in large doses it kills the dish.
Bottom line, pleasure and happiness are two different things — and treating them as the same thing is a road to ruin.
2. Lack of Suffering.
How’s this for a mind-fxck:
You can be happy and be suffering… At the same time.
In fact, the ability to be happy in the face of suffering is one of the defining features of a well-developed human being.
And I’ll take it one step further:
While a lack of suffering doesn’t necessarily make us happy — avoiding and/or resisting suffering for damn sure makes us less happy.
Here’s another one:
3. Material Success.
A bit of a no-duh statement, I know — but we should state it anyway:
Once our basic needs are met, material success is irrelevant to happiness unless it is joined to a deeper meaning (ie. becoming successful by fulfilling a larger purpose, etc).
But don’t take that to mean money doesn’t matter:
Money may not actually buy happiness, but it can buy…
* Relief from financial stress
* Time to do things that make you happy
* Resources to fuel your creativity and larger life purpose.
So building financial freedom through meaningful work is a strategy I’d recommend to just about anyone.
What I don’t recommend is chasing money and status around the way monkeys chase bananas; that won’t do sh*t for your happiness, and could easily make it worse.
Alright, last one:
4. (only) Genetic.
Genetics do influence happiness, but they (thankfully) aren’t the only influence.
There are many factors that influence happiness, and we’ll talk about those over the next few days.
But first, we should probably talk about what happiness actually is.
Hit me back with your best guesses (the answer is simpler than you might think)…
…And I’ll be back with a clear, final definition tomorrow.
– T
P.S. I spent last week outlining a session for our retreat (t-minus 5 weeks, y’all) on this all-important topic of happiness.
I’ll share some of the key pieces in this email series, and members of The Path will get the full-length version when the recordings are released after our retreat.
A banger it will be.
In the meantime, here’s Part 1 of this series if you missed it.
