The Pursuit of Happiness Delusion

When I ask people what they really want out of life, the most common response is, “I just want to be happy.”

Okay, fine, you just want to be happy.

But what in the world is happiness anyway? According to Wikipedia, happiness is “a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”

So happiness is an emotion.

You’ve got happy, and you’ve got it’s opposite, sad. Happy feels good. Sad doesn’t.

Whatever the emotion, however, you can’t feel it all the time, every single moment of the day.

It’s just not in human nature to stay happy.

Why? Because we can’t keep experiencing the same emotion all the time. It’s unnatural unbalanced, and would be exhausting.

Let me get one thing straight here: I’m a big fan of being happy. I love it. It’s awesome. I’m just thinking it wouldn’t be so awesome if happy was all there was, you know what I mean?

So I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with happiness. Not at all. But like all emotions, happiness is fleeting by nature, and so it doesn’t make sense for it to become a goal.

Yet people keep telling me being happy is their goal. Like it’s something you can have all the time. The pursuit of this mythical enduring state of happiness is what motivates many of us to do things—doing things now in order to be happy in the future.

These are tough times. The economy sucks. Most of us are trying to sell when few have the money to buy. Prices are going up, but your salary or wage is staying the same, if, that is, you’re one of the lucky ones who still has a job.

Like many people these days, when I’m worrying, I’m worrying about money.

Sometimes the thought pops up: If I had money, I wouldn’t be worrying about not having money, and I’d be crazy happy.

And then, from within a silent explosion of smoke, a genie appears, telling me I have one wish and one wish only. He tells me to think carefully—

Before he can finish his sentence, I tell him what I want. I don’t need to think about it. Not for a second.

I want a billion dollars. Not a million dollars, mind you.

One.

Billion.

Dollars.

I tell the genie dude I want to be a secret billionaire. (See, to make my wish really cool, people need to think I’m just a millionaire, otherwise I’d get hit up for cash all the time, and then whole One-Wish-Genie fantasy kind of loses its mojo.)

So here I am, this billionaire who everyone thinks is just a Joe Average Millionaire, and I’m chilling in my mansion in New York, Paris, or my mountaintop home on the island of Mykonos.

(I’ll need a private jet to get from one place to the other, so I’m thinking a Gulfstream G550 will do nicely, but I haven’t done my research yet, so I’ll hold off clicking the Amazon.com BUY NOW button for just now.)

I’m smiling just typing this. But how long would the happiness last? I can’t say for sure, but I know that at some point, the momentum of the initial rush would come to a screeching halt.

Whoa, even a billion dollars won’t put me in a perpetual state of happiness?

Me thinks not: I’d be just like before, only a hell of a lot richer. I wouldn’t have any money worries anymore, sure, but something would still be missing. Something is always missing in the material world.

I’d be wondering: “So I’m a billionaire and I’m not happy. What’s the matter with me?”

And so thoughts will bubble up, telling me exactly what the problem is, and what’s missing in my life. Maybe one of those thoughts would be, “You dumbass, you should have asked for perfect health and immortality!

Few of us are truly grateful for the present moment. Sometimes I am, but it doesn’t last. I have to focus into the moment not on my thoughts. (By grateful, I don’t mean grateful in a cerebral way, I mean experiencing the present without thinking about a how things could be better in the future, or how things were better in the past.)

Many things can make people happy. But it’s not a lasting emotion. Nothing in life is lasting, especially emotions. So why make a goal of holding on to one particular emotion? I mean, even if you could experience happiness all the time, it wouldn’t be pleasant; after a while, it would be a complete overload. Too much of anything gets old fast.

You could be in the most miserable situation imaginable—in my case, being stuck in a hospital—and still experience momentary happiness without even wishing for it.

I remember when I was in the Cleveland Clinic, and this sweet lady, a volunteer with the Cleveland Clinic Caring Canines (boy that’s an alliteration if there ever was one), came by with one of those therapy dogs. A ginormous bear-like creature. In fact, he was actually called “Bear.”

I was exhausted from lack of sleep, constant “discomfort” (doctors seem to love this euphemism for the P word), and I was going through a nasty bout of painkiller withdrawal. I was seriously down in the dumps.

But when that huge dog came by, wagging a tail the size of a Christmas tree, my heart lifted...I felt this burst of happiness. It didn’t last long (Bear had to pass on his cheer to others on the floor), but in that fleeting moment, my “discomfort” had lost the battle for attention, and I wasn’t wishing for happiness, or a billion dollars, or even perfect health and immortality.

You can’t hold on to that kind of experience, and you certainly can’t have it be your life, so why have it be your goal?

Happiness comes and goes.

Sadness comes and goes.

Every feeling, every emotion, everything comes and goes.

If I’m addicted to an emotion, I could try to hold on to it or make it my goal. If you hate a feeling or emotion (anger, for instance), I could wish for it to be gone forever. But all I’d be doing is spoiling the present moment with delusions of a better future.

Maybe if that genie were to pop up when I’m still and the world isn’t spinning around in my head, maybe then I’d have the presence of mind to wish for something truly meaningful: for an enduring state of inner peace that is gratitude for the present moment.

Hell, maybe I don’t even need a genie.