The Trek from Meaning to Happiness

I do not know what most people mean when they use the word happy.  I am happy that my dog is learning to go into a down/stay when we are visiting new places but can a person have a happy year or a happy life?  What would that mean?  You can have a year that is filled with joy, but I would suggest that is more an issue of learning to notice the joy around you than a description of exterior accomplishment.  Marriages can be fulfilling and perhaps that is what we mean by having a happy one.  I understand the idea of the "happy home" but these are both expressions of having put work into relationships and sometimes foregoing short-term happiness for long-term meaning.

I suspect that either we do not know what we want when we speak of a desire to be "happy." Either that or we do have an idea and there is a conflict between the hedonism of our desire and the altruism of what we think we ought to desire.  Unwilling to address the conflict, we speak and think in the terms of "happiness," as something the universe will grant it to us because we are good or deserve it.  The universe, however, cares not a whit about your next breath, let alone your happiness in doing so.  Meaning, however, is something we can pursue, if we are willing to sacrifice in service of others.

Living in service of a meaning, however, will entail opportunity costs.  There will be things you can not do,

You keep on using that word.

vacations you cannot take, relationships you cannot pursue, things you cannot buy, and time spent in mundane tedium that makes the dynamic possible, that must be surrendered in service to the meaning you embrace.  Insofar as your internal state of happiness, it matters little the content of the meaning you serve.  Though if you are going to dedicate yourself to something or someones, I would recommend taking a dispassionate look at the situation.  Will you be content to die knowing you poured yourself into this meaning?  If so, I suspect you will find a path that at least will raise the possibility of happiness.

The mainstream is starting to take notice of this conflict in popular culture.  In the Alantic we read this description of what researchers found when they began to ask what people mean by happiness,

"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," the authors of the study wrote. "If anything, pure happiness is linked to not helping others in need.” While being happy is about feeling good, meaning is derived from contributing to others or to society in a bigger way. As Roy Baumeister, one of the researchers, told me, "Partly what we do as human beings is to take care of others and contribute to others. This makes life meaningful but it does not necessarily make us happy.”

My take is that we evolved a tribal species yet Western culture in particular has developed in a highly individualistic manner.  Are tribe is the people around us on an everyday basis. People with whom we identify and whom we could find ourselves serving with little regard for the opportunity cost.  For some people this would be their family or co-workers, others will look to a cause like animal protection, battered women or gay rights, others will find it in a hobby like beekeeping or hunting groups like Ducks Unlimited.  The name of your tribe(s) is unimportant, only that it be worthy of the meaning you give it and the service you offer.

In service we find significance and in significance we find a happy life.

Meaning can result in happiness if you measure the giving over a long period of time.  Serving others, serving a tribe, building something whether it be a community, an organization, a farm, or a monument can result in plenty of "unhappy" days, months, or even years but the happiness arises from having done something you find worthwhile, not necessarily in the day to day doing itself which might be arduous.  Time is the factor we tend to neglect.  Are you chasing after the ever changing day to day happiness "hit" or are you living a life that, over time, will grant the deeper, heavier, sustaining happiness of having done something.worthwhile.