Are most people happy? Dennis Wholey the author of, “Are You Happy?” reports that according to expert opinion, perhaps only 20 percent of people are happy.
Those experts would probably agree with the wry definition of happiness offered by psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, who said, “Happiness is an imaginary condition, formerly attributed by the living to the dead, now usually attributed by adults to children and by children to adults.”
Every day, it seems, we’re flooded with advice about happiness. The relentless message is that there’s something we’re supposed to do to be happy..... make the right choices, or have the right set of beliefs about ourselves. Coupled with this is the notion that happiness is a permanent condition. If we’re not joyful all the time, we conclude there’s a problem.
Yet what most people experience is not a permanent state of happiness. It is something more ordinary, a mixture of what essayist Hugh Prather once called “unsolved problems, ambiguous victories and vague defeats.... with few moments of clear peace.”
Maybe you wouldn’t say yesterday was a happy day, because you had a misunderstanding with your boss. But weren’t there moments of happiness, moments of clear peace?
Happiness is like a visitor. You can’t command it to come to visit; you can only appreciate it when it does show up. And you can’t force happiness to stay .... but you can make sure you are aware of it when it does.
For example when you have a head full of problems, try to notice the sun set. Listen to the shouts of kids playing basketball in the fading light, and feel your spirits rise, just from having paid attention.
Happiness is an attitude, not a condition. It’s cleaning the vertical blinds while listening to your favorite music, or spending a pleasant hour organizing your closet. Happiness is your family assembled at dinner. It’s in the present, not in the distant promise of a “someday when...”. How much luckier we are and how much more happiness we experience if we can fall in love with the life we’re living.
Several years ago in an interview during his battle with cancer, theologian Francis Schaeffer said, “The only way to be foolishly happy in this world is to be young enough, well enough, and have money enough—and not give a care about other people. But as soon as you don’t have any of the first three, or if you have compassion for the weeping world around you, then it is impossible to have the foolish kind of happiness that I believe some Christians present as Christianity.”
What is our greatest need in life? Is it to be happy? We may long for a change in our circumstances, and sometimes that’s what we get. But a changed life is our deepest need. Changed circumstances may make us happier, but a changed life will make us better.
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