Three Levels of Happiness

Still Wave, Moving Ocean

Happiness. We all devote ourselves to it. And yet, maddeningly, it eludes at precisely the moments that we think we should have found it. Why?

There are many ways to think about happiness. Here’s how I’ve been thinking about it these days. As three levels.

The Still Ocean

The perfect life. What does it feel like? Carefree, easy, comfortable. All the toys, all the prizes, none of the pain.

Many of us think that happiness is the absence of struggle. When finally, there is peace, tranquility. So we seek a still ocean, hoping and waiting for the wind to subside. Then, when the waters of life are still, we suppose, well finally be happy.

And yet. Carefree, easy, comfortable soon becomes numb, repetitive, dull, soul-depriving. Happiness is something more subtle, lasting, true. The absence of struggle is just relief.

Happiness as the absence of struggle is little happiness. It’s a fleeting, evanescent thing, barely felt when it’s there. It vanishes in an eyeblink.

It’s true that we can and should seek lives of plenty. But that is not the same as the total absence of struggle.

The ocean of life can’t stay still forever. Nor do we have the power to contain it, silence it, quell it. So when we seek little happiness, happiness as the absence of struggle, all we are really doing is placing our happiness at the mercy of life. Our happiness is extrinsic, not intrinsic, and in that sense, it is inauthentic and false. Conditional, dependent, and originating from circumstance.

Seeking a still ocean doesn’t really lead us to the waters of life. It only keeps us at the mercy of the wind.

The Moving Wave

The wave in the still ocean doesn’t go anywhere. In fact, it doesn’t even really exist. This is why happiness as the absence of struggle ends in futility. Takes us nowhere. We are resisting growing.

The wave in the moving ocean travels. Only it can go somewhere. Happiness as acceptance of struggle leads us to defiance, creativity, imagination, growth

Here’s a secret.

The struggle is the way.

There will always be struggle. No matter how rich, fortunate, or successful you become. One day, you struggle with love. Then, when you find true love, you will struggle with your career. Then, your career is flying high, you’ll struggle with love again. And so on.

That is just the way it should be.

The moment there is no great and enduring struggle in life is the instant the waters of life are receding.

Little happiness is seeking a still ocean. Now you see the folly of that. So you can realise big happiness. Not the absence, but the presence, of struggle.

Big happiness is accepting your struggle. Your struggle. Not every struggle is yours. Felt by you as right, worthy, true, necessary. Your struggle is when the wave in you is moving with the ocean.

Now your happiness is a little more genuine. It isn’t so dependent on circumstance and fate. It is intrinsic, inherent, and inalienable. It is up to you, because it begins in you.

Big happiness is being the moving wave, not seeking the still ocean. Feeling the fierce delight, exhilaration, gratitude of your struggle.

The ocean can’t be still for long. Now you appreciate that there is profound beauty in its movement. Instead of trying to deny, reject, stop the ocean. You are just a wave. How can the wave hold back the ocean?

It can’t.

The Still Wave in the Moving Ocean

What does the wave learn, if it sees itself struggling, rising, falling?

The wave isn’t really moving at all. The ocean is. Now there is something greater than the absence or presence of struggle. The awareness of struggle. What it really is. Its truth and meaning.

When the wave sees the stillness in its movement, then it is letting go. Finally letting go of burden, fear, anxiety, despair.

First, you sought a still ocean. Happiness as the absence of struggle. Then you learned to become the wave. Happiness as the presence of struggle. Now you are still in movement. That is happiness as the appreciation of struggle, the letting go of your struggle as the only struggle. And seeing the ocean's.

Now there is great happiness. The struggle is the way. Not just your way. The way.

The wave sees that all the countless waves are travellers upon the very same ocean. And it is really the ocean that is struggling. Empathy, compassion, forgiveness, gratitude, beauty can be born at last. These are what enduring and profound happiness is composed of. And so this is the greatest kind of happiness.

There are three kinds of happiness. The happiness of the still ocean. The happiness of the moving wave. And the happiness of the still wave in the moving ocean. Each is greater than the last. And the last is the truth in every suffering soul.

The single greatest problem most of us have with happiness is that we don’t conceptualise it well. Having misconceived it, we end seeking its opposite. The absence of struggle, then the presence of struggle, versus the awareness of struggle.

Great happiness is pure stillness in the awareness of struggle. When the winds rage and the waters rise, and yet, your heart, the wave in you, is as clear and luminous as glass.

Umair

Philadelphia

September 2016