March 11, 2010
Beyond the Smiley Face: Understanding What Happiness Really Means
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No simplistic views of
happiness, please.
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The concept of happiness lies at the core of the Spitzer Center’s curricula, but we understand why this word doesn’t always resonate with leaders when they first hear it. In modern English, the word has been drained of much of its deeper meaning, and the culture at large often trivializes happiness. Fr. Robert Spitzer is practiced in presenting happiness in its proper light. The Four-Level Leader asked him how he does it, and here’s his reply.
When I’m speaking on this topic, I always begin by telling people that happiness is a very serious word. It’s serious because the way you view happiness will affect every other decision you make in life. To paraphrase Aristotle, happiness is the one thing in life you can will in and for itself. In other words, everything else is willed for the sake of happiness, while happiness is willed for its own sake. So it’s not just a smiley face image or a word for kids. It’s a very serious, life-determining concept. That’s the first thing I emphasize.
Once people appreciate that, I point out that not all happiness is the same. There are four levels, or drivers, of happiness. There’s sensory or material happiness … ego-comparative or status-driven happiness … contributive or loving happiness … and transcendent or faith-filled happiness.
When Jefferson wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he wasn’t talking about trivial pursuits. The pursuit of happiness means the pursuit of the highest dimensions of your humanity. |
The ancient Romans and Greeks didn’t need a lecture to understand these distinctions because they had unique words for each level. In English, we’ve lost the words we once used to describe different types of happiness. Words like felicity or sublimity are now archaic, and you don’t say beatitude unless you’re talking about the Sermon on the Mount. So in common parlance, at least, our words for these four levels are happiness, happiness, happiness, and happiness.
But once I take time to explain this, people can easily see the different levels of happiness, which allows me to make the really key point: The level of happiness you want most and seek most becomes your purpose in life! It might be ego-gratification or it might be contribution, but that dominant level becomes your identity and your purpose. It affects everything you do in your business and in family life. It affects all your strivings and every decision. It affects all the mental data you input and output, and it certainly affects your ethics. Not only does your purpose in life touch everything you do; it acts like an end, drawing everything to itself. And that is why happiness is one very serious word. It only takes me about three minutes to explain all this to people, and they get it. They see it right away.
Our Founding Fathers certainly understood the importance of happiness. When Jefferson wrote that we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights that include “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” he wasn’t talking about trivial pursuits. The pursuit of happiness means the pursuit of the highest dimensions of your humanity. Your skills, your loves, your ideals and principles, and your transcendent character – these are what make you human in the fullest sense of the word. You have the right to pursue all of these dimensions because that is what will make you truly happy.
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Last changed: Sep 10 2009 at 7:23 AM