BEYOND HAPPINESS

January 7, 2025

Introduction to the Topic

From Robert Coles, The Call of Service

   Dion Diamond had taken leave from the University of Wisconsin to work in Louisiana, where he had relatives.  I first met Dion at the home of a black New Orleans lawyer who was the NAACP Legal Defense Fund representative in the state.  Later, I saw him again in a Baton Rogue prison where he had been jailed for “disturbing the peace.” Dion had attempted to have lunch at a restaurant that wanted no part of black customers.  As a psychologist, I had been asked to testify on his behalf.  The local prosecutor had decided to call him “unstable” and possessed of an “anti-social personality.”  Hence, his lawyer’s decision to ask me to interview him and later tell the court what I thought of Dion’s “personality.”

   As I sat in the prison’s visiting room and heard the tall, thoughtful, sensitive, hard-working man tell of the extreme danger he’d been facing, voluntarily, in hopes of seeing an end to segregation in Louisiana, I wondered, first to myself and then out loud – what gave him the strength to keep going.  He was in constant danger, and in 1962 there wasn’t the national backing and attention that coalesced behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964.  Often Dion was working alone, and there was the distinct possibility that one day he’d be found alone, and dead.

   In our interview I asked him, “Dion, your values and ideals apart, I’m wondering why you keep doing this, given the dangers and obstacles…?”  I was stopped in my well-meaning tracks by the young man’s three-word reply:  “The satisfaction, man.”

   I’m afraid my imagination then was rather limited.  I could think of few possible satisfactions for him.  Dion had been telling me how tough his work was, how lonely at times, how frightening at other times and, worst of all, how discouraging.

   When I asked him about those “satisfactions” he said, “I’m meeting some really fine people.  I’m listening to them tell me a lot about their lives.  I’m hearing them stop and think about what they’re willing to do to change this world here in Louisiana.  Isn’t that enough?  Isn’t that a good reason to feel satisfied?

   “If you can spend some of your life doing work like this, then you’re lucky!  There may be a sheriff out there waiting for me with a gun, but if he gets me, I’ll die thinking, ‘Dion, you actually did something.  You were part of something much bigger than yourself, and you saw people beginning to change, right before your eyes, and that was a real achievement.’  And that’s what I mean by satisfaction.”

** COMMENTARY **

   A number of years ago and prior to retirement I was contacted by an individual from the psychology department of a major university, asking whether I had time to talk to him about a project he and some colleagues were embarking upon.  His team was concerned about a decline in the overall state of happiness among Americans, and believed they had discovered at least a partial corrective.  Intrigued, I set a date for a longer conversation.

   When we spoke again, this gentleman began by outlining his concern: too many people today report feeling stressed out and lonely, which has led to serious health issues, substance abuse, depression and a decline in personal productivity.  As a response to this “emerging epidemic” that already affects an estimated one-third of the adult population, his team has launched a new for-profit start-up simply called “Happy.” 

    The objective of this enterprise is to connect the downcast to compassionate, confidential listeners with whom they can open up and freely share their troubles. This is designed as an “on-demand” service that clients can access at all times and for talk-sessions of indeterminate length.

   “Happy’s” sharing economy creates conversations between people who need support and people who are naturally good at providing it,” their literature states. Rates are designed to be affordable: $25.00 per hour.

   After this explanation of Happy’s mission and purpose, their representative cut to the chase: as a minister I may know of individuals well-equipped to serve as providers, “happiness givers,” as it were.  These he described as sensitive, caring men and women with time on their hands:  social work students, retirees, empty-nesters, stay-at-home parents and unemployed Millennials.  I said I’d think about it.

   Happiness, as this story indicates, has become a major concern in today’s society.  We are told that we have a “right” to be happy, that happiness should be one of our primary objectives in life.  No less a figure than the Dalai Lama has stated, “The great question that confronts us all is ‘How am I to be happy?’” And yet, at this moment in history we appear to be experiencing a happiness deficit. Surely it is a problem simply begging for a solution.

   Another issue immediately arises, however, when we pause to ask, “what constitutes happiness?”  What are its sources and how is it maintained?  The poet Amy Lowell explained the difficulty with two evocative lines:  

Happiness, to some, elation,

is, to others, mere stagnation.

   Is there a “one-size-fits-all” formula for happiness? Clearly not. We look at people who seem to have everything going for them – wealth, social standing, what appears to be a stable family life, good health – and yet they are anything but happy. For them, the cup is always half-empty. As Harvard’s Daniel Gilbert observes in his book Stumbling on Happiness,

Happiness really is nothing more or less than a word that we word-makers can use to indicate anything we please.  The problem is that people seem pleased to use this one word to indicate a host of different things.

   Commentators on the subject, Gilbert writes, distinguish between three basic variations of happiness.  It can be treated as a feeling (Emotional happiness), as a function of virtuous behavior, “doing the right thing” (Moral happiness), or as an altered state of consciousness resulting from the exercise of non-judgmental awareness (Judgmental happiness).  Classic philosophers generally extolled the happiness that springs from virtue.  For the Buddha and his followers, Judgmental happiness was primary, an expression of the clear and uncontaminated “natural mind.”

   In neither of the latter two instances were the emotions placed at the forefront, as is typically the case today.  Indeed, proponents of Moral Happiness were wont to dismiss the sentiment of happiness as “cheap…a vacuous state of bovine contentment…. It was considered perfectly tragic for life to be aimed at nothing more substantive and significant than a “feeling,” Gilbert comments.

   In any case, because each person’s feelings of happiness are unique and are aroused by a wide and disparate variety of experiences and stimuli, it’s hard to come up with a simple strategy for achieving this status.  The person who professes to be happiest when they are freebase climbing Yosemite’s El Capitan and their adrenaline is pumping makes me shake my head in disbelief. Our newly elected President, for whom daily doses of adulation and applause seem to be required to experience happiness, likewise confounds me.  And so does a species of happiness that has become increasingly common in today’s politically polarized culture – schadenfreude – which can be defined as “the feeling of pleasure or satisfaction that comes from witnessing or learning about another person’s misfortune or failure.” 

    This is not to say that feelings are irrelevant to happiness, only that we may be giving them more weight than they deserve.  Moreover, in the realm of feelings, it is all-too-easy to confuse “happiness” with sensations that are somewhat analogous but considerably less fulfilling: pleasure, for instance. “The problem,” cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict once opined, “Is not that we are never happy, it is that happiness is so episodical.”

   This comment is particularly pertinent when we talk about pleasure-induced happiness. It’s frustratingly transient and when it disappears, we may feel worse than we did before. I’m sure we’ve all had the experience of purchasing something nice for ourselves, feeling that uptick in” our well-being, but then watching it subside as we slip back to the state where we started.

    Growing up, Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” was one of my favorite programs, and I rarely missed a new episode on our black-and-white TV.  One memorable story featured a ruthless criminal who, having been shot and killed by the police, finds himself in the afterlife.  Here he is greeted by an angelic being who informs h him that his every wish will now be granted.

    Amazed, and somewhat baffled to be in heaven, the criminal quickly takes stock of the situation and begins placing orders.  In the twinkling of an eye, each desire he expresses is satisfied: money, exquisite cuisine, beautiful women.  Life after death, it appears, could not be better.

    However, as time goes by, the pleasure he derives from this continual gratification of his appetites begins to diminish – psychologists call this phenomenon “habituation.”  So now the criminal asks the angel for some task that will make him feel useful.  He’s told that he can have anything he wants – except the opportunity to work.  Over time, the criminal becomes increasingly frustrated.  He goes back to the angel and says that he now wants to go to the “other place” because heaven is driving him nuts.  The camera zooms in on the angel, whose benign countenance suddenly becomes sinister. “This IS the other place,” he says with an ominous cackle.

   What the criminal experiences is, in fact, a measurable phenomenon. Studies have revealed that the brain chemistry of shoppers changes at the point at which they make a purchase. The individual becomes momentarily happier because a little dopamine is released as the transaction is completed.  Indeed, the typical customer’s pleasure and happiness peak at that moment, rather than when the desired item is actually used.

   The happiness associated with pleasure can also work to our disadvantage at times. Consider “confirmation bias” and the similar way in which it affects one’s mood. When we read or hear something that supports a strongly held belief - whether about cats, dogs, personalities or political positions – we are again rewarded with a hit of dopamine and our happiness quotient rises accordingly. Because such confirmation feels good, Jack and Sara Gorman write, we tend to “stick to our guns even when we are wrong.” 

    So, when we relegate happiness to the realm of feelings, we condemn ourselves to kind of boom-and-bust cycle that may also entail a significant degree of self-deception.  Moreover, Barbara Ehrenreich points out, if the “feeling” of happiness is our paramount concern, we may seek to avoid exposure to controversy, conflict or acts of injustice because they serve to “bring us down.”  Pursuing happiness can thus become a rather narcissistic and socially irresponsible enterprise.

   But now let’s talk about “pursuit” a little more.  When our third President composed the memorable phrase “…all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” he may have slid off the rails a bit.  The longer I live the more I am convinced that pursuing happiness for its own sake, as an end in itself, is a fool’s errand.  In and of itself, happiness cannot be caught; it is, rather, the by-product of some other agenda we establish and work to fulfill.

    Dion Diamond, the Wisconsin student who risked his life fighting for civil rights in his native Louisiana certainly wasn’t pursuing happiness.  And in his conversation with Robert Coles he didn’t call it that.  Dion spoke of “satisfaction,” feeling good about the relationships he was developing and the changes he could already see coming.  “If you can spend some of your life doing work like this,” he said, “then you’re lucky.”

    Similarly, Mikayla Dreyer is a Millennial and a registered independent who lives in Missouri.  She’s never been politically engaged and, like many of her chronological peers, would rather text than talk on the telephone.  But after the 2016 election, and as the political winds began to shift, she began to think differently.  Many of the new administration’s policy proposals concerned her deeply.  “I commute a lot to work,” she told The New Yorker’s Kathryn Schulz, “and I have Bluetooth set up in my car.”

   And so, every day from December 30th to February 2nd, while driving to her place of employment Dreyer called her Republican U.S. Senator’s office to share her own perspective.  “That’s become my routine,” she says and further reports that it has been good for her mood. “When I’m not actively standing up and doing something, I get dragged down and start to feel hopeless.”

   If I were going to fit these two examples into the previously mentioned categories they resemble “Moral Happiness” most closely.  When we place ourselves in the service of a worthy cause or an unfulfilled need, it does boost our spirits.  Even if there is no guarantee that our efforts will bear immediate fruit, just the potential for success, if not this season then perhaps the next, can improve our state of mind.

   This is the active life, finding one’s voice, exercising one’s moral muscle.  Stewardship belongs in this category; the willingness, as Peter Block puts it, “to be accountable for the well-being of a larger organization by operating in service…to those around us.” 

   Block, an organizational consultant by trade, describes this as a spiritual, as well as a practical enterprise.  “We want to affirm the spirit,” he writes, “for there is a longing in each of us to invest our energy in things that matter…finding meaning in, and treating as an offering, what we do.”

   Of course, we have to be sensible here.  Excessive service can weary rather than lift the spirit, so we must learn to take our pulse and know when to step back.  It is when we disengage and allow ourselves to “rest in the grace of the world,” as Wendell Berry puts it, that we begin to experience “judgmental happiness.”  We are now living in the moment, open, aware and unencumbered.  “The earth was warm under me, and warm as I crumbled it through my fingers,” Willa Cather wrote in My Antonia.

Queer little red bugs came out and moved in slow squadrons around me.  Their backs were polished vermillion, with black spots. I kept as still as I could.  Nothing happened.  I did not expect anything to happen.  I was something that lay under the sun and felt it, like the pumpkins, and I did not want to be anything more.  I was entirely happy.  Perhaps we feel like that when we die, and become part of something entire, whether it is sun and air, or goodness and knowledge.  At any rate, that ishappiness: to be dissolved into something complete and great.  And when it comes to one, it comes as naturally as sleep.

   Again, the “pursuit” of happiness sounds too much like work, a persistent moving toward something that we can never quite grasp whereas it may really be as close at hand as the warm, fragrant earth. 

   It’s not the earth itself that makes the difference, of course.  It could be the clouds, the cup of tea, the cat on the pillow or the dog on a leash; soft strains of music or laughter around the table.  “We invite a time in which we can taste what we have been given,” Wayne Muller says, “take delight in what we already have, and see that it is good.”

   When we cultivate such experiences our sense of appreciation and gratitude expands, emotional states often connected to happiness. But it’s also rather paradoxical because, as Rebecca Solnit rightly observes, “Making happiness your primary objective in life gets in the way of actually becoming happy.” 

   Is there a formula we can follow that increases the odds that we’ll stumble onto happiness or something like it?  The ancient Greeks developed a concept that may provide a clue: Eudaimonia, which they defined as a “complete and flourishing life.”  It doesn’t have to be a heroic, or even an outwardly impressive life for this to be the case. The writer James Kavenaugh offers a telling example from a small, family-run grocery store in his neighborhood:

    “The Italian proprietors, a husband and wife, always greet me with a kind word and a smile.  They smile when I buy a half-pound of ground beef for some homemade chili.  The store is their home, their life, their community.  They know almost everyone by name, or at least by face. They charge more than the supermarket, but they also give more

“And when I leave the store, I somehow feel more human, more in touch with the realities of life….They work every day from nine to noon.  They eat lunch together while they work.  And when I say, “You work too hard.” They answer, “This is where we are happiest.

    “And I believe them.  They do not work at all; they spend the day serving their friends.  And then they go home, have a glass of wine, watch some TV, light a candle to the Madonna and say their simple prayers. Sometimes they play cards or reminisce before going to bed.

    “At times I sing a little when I leave their store, not because I have been “Saved.” But because in the beauty of this vision, I catch a glimpse of the divine in my own life.”

   So, honor your relationships, be of service however small, cultivate gratitude, forget about finding happiness and maybe, just maybe, even at this late stage in life, it will find you.