Where Does Happiness Come From?
People are voicing, “I just want to be happy!” nowadays. In a world of despair, suffering, and illnesses, toxic positivity is growing rampant even within church walls. But fundamentally, humans desire a long-lasting sustainable satisfaction. Life doesn’t always pan out where things continuously run smoothly, and we feel successful and hopeful. Certain life circumstances have uncontrollable, unmovable forces, such as receiving a progressive cancer diagnosis with short-term life expectancy, job termination, being evicted from your residence, or a spouse leaving his/her family.
Discovering happiness can seem impossible with a point of no return. Therefore, how can we achieve real happiness that brings meaning into our struggles and pain?
What Is Happiness?
Physiological, mental, emotional, and spiritual benefits are attributed to happiness. Being happy reshapes our sense of self and offers us a better quality of life. But if you ask people what they think of happiness, there are vast, conflicting views backed by decades of global and credible research.
To name a few, some believe happiness is an inaccessible ideal, an acquired habit, or perhaps it can be bought. Others wonder if happiness is really a person, place, or thing (think, “A happy wife is a happy life”). But then others speculate happiness must have addictive qualities. If we’re surrounded by happy individuals, then through physical proximity and osmosis, we too can board the happiness train.
Happiness is a positive, primary emotion that is felt through a range of small and big life experiences. With more life exposure and repetitive behavior, people decide what brings them enjoyment where hobbies and passionate interests are developed. When our bodies are flooded with positive feelings, chances are we’re feeling happy.
Purposeful Living From an Existentialist View
Abracadabra… Be Happy! America has a culturally ingrained notion that happiness is owed, guaranteed, and a must. The US Declaration of Independence says, “…life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” self-help books, social media, and pop culture all drive home this happiness conquest daily.
Just take Bobby McFerrin’s popular 1988 song “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” This hit implies we’re to be happy no matter what life throws at us. Real happiness isn’t frivolous, manipulative, or an act of denial, with emotional suppression at its core. Meaningful happiness is responsible, recognizes negative emotions exist, and makes us human.
Viktor Frankl, the famous psychotherapist, created logotherapy for his existential approach to counseling individuals. In his text, Man’s Search for Meaning, America is referenced as embodying the “be happy” ideology. But happiness, like laughter, can’t be chased after or issued on a “hocus-pocus-like” command. Instead, we’re to find reasons for being happy and bring those meanings to reality to be experienced.
When faced with unavoidable suffering, we’re left with an agency of responsibility to rise above the preset conditions and choose a response or different attitude toward circumstances. This is freeing because when we feel stuck, we still have the freedom to change through free will.
In society, there are those who possess what Frankl calls a “defiant power of the human spirit,” which is a logotherapeutic implication [1]. These people face and endure unbeatable odds and significant hardships daily, like battling a traumatic bodily injury with permanent paralysis, etc. Joni Eareckson Tada fits this depiction of someone who has mastered both suffering and contentment well [2].
Cultivate Contentment
Humans have desires and urges, and to satisfy those, we fill the voids with good, pleasing things. But the reality is we’re not meant to have it all together, get everything we want, or feel happiness constantly. Cultivating contentment can help us live in contentious times and stretch us to be comfortable in our own skin.
Contentment is a deeper form of happiness in which satisfaction lies where striving to resolve/eliminate problems quickly and human comparison ends. Healthy, happy living recognizes circumstances are out of our control and nothing is permanent. What might make us happy one day might make us sour the next. We need to lay down swords of self-preservation, which include impressing upon expectations, views, and beliefs learned from our family of origin, peer influences, cultural biases, and stereotypes regarding happiness and enjoyment in life.
Happiness needs to be true to our authentic selves, where we don’t give in to worldly whims and fads. Meaningful happiness is a personal, moldable journey that comes from deliberate intentionality and choices. Learn to cultivate contentment and find meaning in each present moment to embrace a happiness that comes from within.
Additional resources to further explore this topic:
Alcorn, R. C. (2016). Happiness. Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Tada, J. E. (2009). A Lifetime of Wisdom: Embracing the Way God Heals You. Zondervan.
[1] Frankl, V. E. (2006). Man’s Search For Meaning. Beacon Press.
[2] Tada, J. E. (2021). Joni. Bantam Books.