“Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. “ Victor Frankl, in Man’s Search for Meaning.
Sounds good, doesn’t it?
I never got around to writing about this quotation on Monday, having been sidetracked by the whole balloon saga. As I implied in that post, though, it could seem a little . . . arrogant for me to argue with a man who survived the concentration camps, lost members of his family including his pregnant wife, and founded a whole new school of psychology, logotherapy. Admiration for Frankl is still very strong; his book has been rated as one of the ten more influential books in the United States. In spite of that attitude, however, “the book’s ethos—its emphasis on meaning, the value of suffering, and responsibility to something greater than the self — seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning.” (“There’s More to Life than Being Happy”) This article from The Atlantic goes on to quote psychologists who were planning an article on their research (but whose names were not listed): “Happiness without meaning characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desire are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.”
To which I say, “Duh.” What would “happiness without meaning” even look like? Some kind of mindless ecstasy? However you’d describe it, the feeling wouldn’t be at all sustainable. Indeed, a pursuit of this type of “happiness” would be an exercise in futility. Aristotle defined happiness as “the exercise of one’s powers in the pursuit of excellence.” That hardly sounds like an empty, easy endeavor.
And then there’s the spiritual aspect of happiness. I was reminded of something a woman said at a talk I gave last week (an event that made m profoundly happy): “I’ve always heard that God is more interested in having us be holy than He is in having us be happy.” So I told her, tactfully, I hope, that I didn’t agree, and that in my estimation the holier we are, which is only another way of saying the closer to God we are, the happier we are. The closer to God we are, the more we are approaching the state of being the way we were made to be, which can’t help but make us happier, in a lasting way.
And what about “the value of suffering,” which is mentioned above in connection with Frankl? Again, I want to be very careful about setting myself up as some sort of authority in contention with a person who has experienced something vastly greater than I ever have. I cannot imagine the fortitude that caused Frankl to reach out to his fellow prisoners even in the midst of the horrible conditions of the camps. But isn’t that fortitude and reaching out just the point? Frankl didn’t see the suffering as an end in itself; the starvation, cold, brutality, and pain weren’t good. They were only valuable as means. If someone came out on the other side of the camps as profoundly cynical and embittered, then there would be no value in his suffering.
Well, I’ve gotten myself into trying to discuss a huge subject in a 500+-word blog post, always a fraught endeavor. This “what is the value of happiness” question is at the heart of my whole point for this blog, so I guess I’ll just say, “That’s enough for now,” and let it go at that.
How much attention do you pay to your own happiness?