Can Happiness Be Measured? Why or Why Not?

Scientific attempts to define happiness often rely on external indicators such as high average income, low unemployment, economic freedom, and an open labor market. Yet, despite these seemingly favorable conditions, true happiness remains elusive. Even generous social welfare benefits and reduced inequality do not guarantee a sense of well-being. For example, Norway, despite its high standard of living, has one of the highest suicide rates.

Scientists attempt to measure happiness through life expectancy, education, GDP per capita, and purchasing power, yet people still do not feel truly happy. This is because happiness is not a material state but a spiritual one.

Happiness is the connection with eternity and perfection, the very purpose of life that we can continually calibrate ourselves toward. However, if we take a step toward this ultimate purpose, we find ourselves receding from it once again, and this generates an ongoing process of aspiration. Such a pursuit has its pains and struggles, but they are not empty pains. Instead, they are the sweet suffering of love, i.e., the simultaneous feeling of yearning and fulfillment that together form the sensation of happiness.

For example, two people might long for each other for many years, suffering from separation, moving toward one another, dreaming of unity. When they finally meet, all past suffering merges with their present moment of closeness, creating a powerful sense of happiness. The more these two opposing forces of longing and fulfillment grow and sustain each other, the stronger the feeling of happiness becomes.

There can be no happiness without suffering, and suffering must inevitably lead to happiness. This is why it is called the “suffering of love,” as love cannot exist without the prior experience of longing, lack, and desire. These desires emerge precisely in the search, in the movement toward love, forming a vessel for the sensation of happiness. However, when we achieve happiness, it begins to fade.

Therefore, happiness must be continually renewed. Even if we physically remain with a loved one, we must constantly cultivate new desires and aspirations toward them. By doing so, we create the illusion of distance, reigniting the longing and the joy of closeness again and again.

Happiness exists in balance, in the middle line between two forces. On one side is the continuous revelation of striving, longing, and emptiness; on the other is connection, love, and fulfillment. The middle line unites these forces, ensuring that desire and fulfillment grow together. This lets us experience eternity and perfection, where we sway between extremes but exist in both simultaneously.

However, this understanding cannot be conveyed through external explanations. It requires inner development, the refinement of perception that people do not yet possess. This is precisely the purpose of the wisdom of Kabbalah, i.e., the wisdom of "how to receive" ("Kabbalah" means "reception" in Hebrew). It teaches how to build such a vessel in which we can feel genuine, lasting happiness.