The Pursuit of Happiness

I often ask clients, “What’s your goal in life, your purpose, your life’s meaning?”?On the top of the list of replies is, “I want to be happy, do the things that make me happy, enjoy life!”?The cornerstone of our country, inspired by an outrage over the unfair taxation of a breakfast drink, is the immortal words that highlight our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Invoked by no one less than the Creator, these words have been internalized as our birthright.

So, what do therapists do??Do they help their clients to be happy??Do they discern what is making them unhappy and treat it?

And why are clients in the therapist’s office??Certainly, if they were happy, they wouldn’t be there.?They’re obviously unhappy. So, what to do?

A predicament indeed.?To understand this problem, we must take a journey from 1776 to today. No one denies that humans are influenced by social forces.?Perhaps no social force is as powerful as technology.?And high among human forces is the force of denial.?So, here’s an equation that will serve you well:?History + Denial = Crazy.

The Land of Powdered Wigs

The American founders were obviously fashion conscious.?They wore powdered wigs and high heels. They were also short and bald.?They lived in a remarkably different time.?Far from the industrial revolution, or electricity or indoor plumbing for that matter. Medical treatment included bloodletting and the application of leaches to extract troublesome blood. Vaccination programs consisted of carting the cadaver of a plague victim through the village and mingling their blood with the villagers' blood at the edge of a knife.?Remarkably this worked, in a fashion.

Do you think that these folks’ pursuit of happiness was the same as ours?

Eighteenth century America was a dangerous place.?Starvation, freezing, disease, and minor accidents were all life-threatening.?To a large degree, eating, keeping warm, and staying free from disease and infections was considered “happiness.”?Not loosing your wife and/or child during childbirth was a bonus!

The 19th century brought an interesting variety of war including the Civil War, which turned starvation, freezing, and disease into an art form.?For further entertainment bayonets, muskets, and cannons ventilated as many people as possible.

The 20th century globalized misery and attempted to distribute the worse that human nature could offer evenly.?Two world wars.?Massive genocide.?And the atomic age, memorializing our ability to destroy the entire planet.?Thank God our breakfast drinks were now taxed fairly!

That is a brief historical survey of the pursuit of “happiness.”

The Land of Plenty

Having enjoyed a life spanning eight centuries (and at this writing it’s not over yet), I experienced many of the great technical advances of the 20th century: refrigerators (yep, we had an icebox), cars, washing machines, black and white television, supermarkets, frozen food, saugercoated everything, food in a box, hula-hoops, and pet-rocks.?And a few other things. The consumer economy was born.

For the first time in history, the great masses had their basic needs met.?For the most part, we had housing, food, clothing, medical care, education, transportation, in a word “happiness.”?We decided what happiness was.?To some it was watching the Brooklyn Dodgers on TV.?To others it was listening to Elvis on the record player.?Others rode to the beach in a car. Decisions.?Decisions.

The Technology Revolution

At some point the ability to decide for ourselves what we wanted to be happy became too difficult. The technocrats rescued us.?How ingenious they were!

They realized that if we had a telephone, that was also a computer, that took pictures, and made videos, and fit in a pocket, our lives would be transformed.?Who could figure?

Left to our own devices, we would never find the need for a phone that wasn’t attached to a wall.?We won’t even know what a computer was, let alone one that takes pictures that don’t need to be developed at the drug store.?And what is a “video” anyway??Praise God, our lives were transformed.

Now we could experience happiness heretofore never experienced by humans: We can take pictures of our food and magically share them with the world.?We could share our vacations with people we’ve never met, and let burglars know that it’s safe to rip us off, all at the same time. We could have dinner with our loved ones and ignore them by watching YouTube. (Who says loved ones have to be interesting?) And we could cherish our many “friends” who “like” us when we “post” something amusing. ?Could anyone be happier?

Can One Pursue Happiness?

The reality is happiness cannot be pursued.?It must be ensued.?It is the by-product of our search for, and practice of, meaningful activities.

Can one go to the gym and do health, strength, and endurance? No. One goes to the gym and does exercises.?As a result of the exercises health, strength, and endurance can be achieved.?The consumer economy has told us what to do, leaving us at a loss to understand why we should do it. Our activities have become meaningless.

It is not as if this arrangement simply put the cart before the horse, but rather, market forces have wrecked the cart and killed the horse!

Enter the Existential Vacuum

Our primary motivation is meaning. The pursuit of meaning is a completely human characteristic.?No animal considers the meaning and purpose of their existence.?When the meaning of our life is frustrated, we experience an existential vacuum.

Nature hates a vacuum and will work hard to fill the void.?In this case, it will be filled by one or more of the following: depression, aggression, and addiction.

Look around you.?You know it’s true.?Unprecedented depression.?Never before recorded suicide rates. In some cases, children taking their lives because of Facebook bullying.?Criminal aggression from coast to coast.?Domestic violence. Child Abuse. And addiction.?The highest overdoses ever recorded during this past year.?Over 100,000 of our young, our national treasure, victims of the existential vacuum.

If our breakfast drink is ever again is taxed unfairly again, perhaps we should assert our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of meaning.”

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