What is Happiness?

“Who do you think is happier?” asks Marc Reklau in his book Destination Happiness, “people who [have] won the lottery or people who [have become] paralyzed after an accident?”

You may be surprised at the answer.

“Yes, the lottery winners were very happy, but not for very long,” Reklau continues. “After six months they went back to their previous levels of happiness.”

On the other hand, “the accident victims were sad, but surprisingly after six months, they [also] went back to their previous levels of happiness.” Think about that for a moment. Six months later both groups – those who had won the lottery and those who had an accident and were paralyzed – had returned to their previous state of happiness. So happiness is an inside job. Our circumstances don’t determine how satisfied we are with our lives. Something else – on the inside – makes the difference.

You and I count as part of our heritage the blessings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But what is happiness? Is happiness something that can be obtained by pursuing it? Is it a product of circumstance or surroundings? Is it to be equated with money in the bank, a diploma on the wall, the respect of one’s friends and neighbors? Or does it depend on something else, something entirely different?  Think for a moment: What would it take to make you happy – really happy?

Jesus talked about happiness, but not in the same way you or I would talk about it. In fact, he turned our understanding of happiness upside down. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, he made some unique and unusual statements about happiness which we know as the Beatitudes. Luke, in his Gospel, gives us a condensed version of some of those stirring statements:

Happy are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

Happy are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied.

Happy are you who weep now, for you will laugh.

Happy are you when people hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.

Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven. For that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.

Happy are the poor? Happy are the hungry? Happy are those who weep? Most of us are more comfortable with the word “blessed” than the word “happy” in these circumstances. But the Greek word makarios, which most translators of the Bible translate as “blessed,” can also be translated as “happy.”

Many authors who have studied the pursuit of happiness have observed that the happiest people on earth are not those who pursue happiness, but those who seek God and serve others.

Happiness isn’t something that happens to you on the outside, but something that happens on the inside.

You may be familiar with the story of a king who was suffering from a certain malady. He was advised by his astrologist that he would be cured if the shirt of a contented man were brought for him to wear. People went out to all parts of the kingdom after such a person, and after a long search they found a man who was really happy . . . but he didn’t possess a shirt.

It is a curious spiritual principle that the more we have, the more we demand out of life. So often it is the person who appears to be blessed, with all the external trappings of the good life, who is so easily miffed at God, while the person who has very little feels a much greater sense of gratitude for life’s little joys and pleasures.

This is not to say that in order to find happiness, we need to give away everything we possess. That might help or it might be the worst thing we could possibly do. It might fill us with so much resentment, or even worse, with so much self-righteous pride that we would be intolerable. It is to say, however, that some of us have our values all out of whack. That is why we are so miserable.

There are only two sources of happiness in this world. One is a right relationship with God. The other is a right relationship with our fellow human beings. Everything else is extraneous. Poverty or wealth, handicap or health, surrounded by loved ones or weeping beside a lonely grave – we can still have a well-spring of joy within, if we understand the source of happiness.

Happiness is not dependent upon circumstances but on an inner certainty – that we are loved and accepted and that we belong to God.

How sad it is to see so many people go through life without discovering this essential principle that happiness comes only from a right relationship with God and with others.

J.T. Fisher states: “If you were to take the sum total of all authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene . . . you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount . . . For nearly two thousand years the Christian world has been holding in its hands the complete answer to its restless and fruitless yearnings. Here . . . rests the blueprint for successful human life with optimism, mental health, and contentment.”

The adage that money cannot buy happiness has been affirmed time after time. According to scientific studies, once our basic needs are met (shelter, food, and basic education) income makes little difference in our levels of happiness, except in extreme situations.

Psychologist and best-selling author Dr. Martin Seligman has himself spent decades studying the subject of happiness.  In his experience, the recipe for happiness contains three “ingredients”: pleasure (that is, the sensations of what we normally think of as happiness), engagement (that is, how enthusiastically involved you are with your relationships, your work, your hobbies, etc.), and meaning (how you contribute to the greater good).  He says that the pleasure component of happiness is the least significant and the least enduring of the three.  Those things that engage us and give us meaning are much more important in our search for happiness.

That is the reason that people of faith are happier people. They generally have more stable relationships, and they have a greater sense of purpose for their lives.

In 1989, columnist Nick Clooney decided that he, like a modern-day Huck Finn, wanted someone else to do his work for a little while. So he invited a variety of local celebrities from the Kentucky-Ohio area to send in their ideas on a column about epitaphs. What would these famous men and women want to have written on their tombstones? He was surprised by the wit and sincerity of the various responses.

Ira Joe Fisher, a weather man, wrote a couple of lines that went like this, “He wanted the mind of Plato, the heart and soul of Socrates. But his life was more of a tribute to Ol’ Mediocrities.”

But the most sweetly whimsical message was from Charlie Mechem, former head of Taft Broadcasting. His epitaph read like this:

“Dear God, Thanks for letting me visit. I had a wonderful time.”

Is that what you would like to say when you come to the end of your life? You can, you know. Give your life to Christ and look for people you can serve. And you’ll be able to say with Charlie Mecham: “Dear God, Thanks for letting me visit. I had a wonderful time.”