Happiness Is the Wrong Goal to Strive For
“I just want to be happy.” “All that matters to me is your happiness.” “The most important thing is that you’re happy.” We seem to live in happiness-obsessed times. Parents raise their children to focus on finding happiness. People seek lasting relationships with partners so they can be happy. We want to be happy at work. We want to attain our other life goals so we can be happy.
But this obsession with happiness is also our downfall. We’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid. We struggle and we strive, we achieve and amass, and yet, happiness continues to elude far too many people.
Why is this? Because happiness — or the perception of what happiness should be — is a false promise. Somehow, we’ve come to believe — or perhaps expect — that happiness, once achieved, is a sustained state of being; a pinnacle worth endeavoring for. The reality, of course, is that few people sustain happiness for very long, so the achievement is short-lived, replaced by other states of mind: concern, anxiety, dissatisfaction, desire, doubt, anger, fear…whatever. The state of happiness is but a blip in a spectrum of natural emotions that humans go through, and that makes it the wrong thing to set as a goal.
Goals, as we’ve come to know the term, are accomplishments we target to achieve sometime in the future. In our contemporary times, we establish lists of goals, dutifully ticking them off once we’ve achieved them. And once we achieve a goal, we naturally have to set up a new one in its place — we’re not a society that rests on its laurels.
This all means that goals are finite objects. In fact, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the word “goal” first appeared in the 1530s to mean the “end point of a race,” though it interestingly also “appears once before this (as gol), in a poem from early 14th century and with an apparent sense of ‘boundary, limit’.” Inherently, therefore, goals do not mean to be sustained, which makes setting happiness up as a goal completely inappropriate. Unless you only want to attain happiness once and as a fleeting thing… and I can’t say I know of anyone who strives for fleeting happiness.
So, do we not strive for happiness at all? Of course not! Perhaps, though, we should “rework the narrative” — another popular modern day phrase — in order to recognize the transience of happiness. For inspiration, I look instead at those who seem to actually have achieved that elusive state of sustained happiness. Did they set out to achieve happiness as a goal? If not, how did they get there? And even more so, how do they stay there?
I think about this one a lot. I read, absorb, process, and theorize. I’m certain that I can find information and research data online to support my ultimate theory (because if you have a theory, you can pretty much find something already online to support it, and I do wear the hat of professional research analyst from time to time, I should add), but I’m not going to bother doing so because it doesn’t matter to me how strong or weak my theory is. It’s just my theory — my conclusion — and that’s good enough for me.
What is it, you ask? What’s the right narrative? What is it that mothers and fathers should be teaching their children? That mentors should impart to mentees? That people should be telling themselves each day in order to truly find happiness?
I believe the goal should be GRATITUDE.
Being grateful is a state of being that can be sustained. Gratitude, for everything from one’s health to one’s loved ones to the trappings of one’s achievements, doesn’t have to be reached over and over and over again. We can be grateful all the time, even in our lowest as well as highest and of moments.
To be grateful, truly grateful, we must pause and self-reflect: We are alive. We have this very moment in time, perhaps alone or shared with others, to be conscious and aware. We have ahead of us yet another breath to breathe, chance to live, next moment to take advantage of. Perhaps the sum total of our next moments will lead to something fantastic beyond our wildest dreams; or, perhaps it will lead to just yet another breath to breathe. Who is to say?
The state of gratitude also amazingly leads to something else: the possibility to recognize that you might actually be happy — or capable of happiness — if you just took stock of what you already have in your life and what might lie ahead. The ability to be grateful can literally and suddenly shift your thinking. You might even be able to transcend happiness and find calmness and peace. Imagine it this way: For those who can’t be bothered to take the time, finding gratitude is like a quick dose of meditation.
And so, Fair Reader, if you have made it this far, to the end of my post, here is my wish — no, my goal — for you: Find gratitude in every day of your life. It’s easy. Just try it.
Start now.
