Answers to Satisfy the Soul

Clear Straight Answers to 20 of Life's Most Perplexing Questions

by Jim Denney

$12.95 ($19.95 Canada) • ISBN 1-884956-20-3 • 192 pages

Sample Chapter

Excerpt From

How Can I Find Happiness?

  The English philosopher Bertrand Russell was sitting in his garden, a pensive expression on his face, when a friend happened by. "Why so thoughtful?" asked the friend.
     For a few seconds, Russell seemed not to have heard the question. Then he shook himself from his reverie. "Eh? Oh. I’ve just made the most fascinating discovery. Every time I talk to a learned scholar, I am convinced that it is impossible to be happy in life. But when I talk to my gardener, I am forced to the opposite conclusion."
     Bertrand Russell’s gardener knew. Happiness is not reserved for the learned or the rich or the winners of life’s lottery. Some of the happiest people in this world are the simplest, most common of people, and even people who have endured great hardship and suffering. Paradoxically, I’ve noticed that some of the richest, most highly achieving people are the least happy.
     So where does happiness come from? And how can we find it?

You don't get it by pursuing it
     It’s as American as the Declaration of Independence: We have a right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." In fact, it seems that everywhere we turn in America, we are not just given the right to be happy, we are practically ordered to be happy—as in the words of that stupid Bobby McFerrin song, "Don’t worry: be happy!"
     Psychologist Viktor Frankl, the Auschwitz survivor and originator of logotherapy, once observed, "Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."1 In other words, in order to be happy, we must not make happiness our goal. Happiness only comes as the by-product of pursuing something other than happiness. But what? If we can’t be happy by pursuing happiness, what should we pursue instead? Answer: We must pursue a reason to be happy.
     Frankl used this analogy: Tell a man to laugh, and if he does, it will probably sound hollow and forced. But tell him a really good joke, and he’ll laugh. Why? Because you’ve given him a reason to laugh. It’s the same with happiness. Tell a grumpy man, "Be happy," and you’ll probably just make him grumpier. It’s not enough to want to be happy. You’ve got to have a reason to be happy. If you have a reason, then happiness naturally ensues.
     So what is a good reason for being happy? Some people would say prosperity brings happiness. Others say pleasure brings happiness. Well, our nation has never been more prosperous, and we’ve never had more pleasures to spend our prosperity on—but, seemingly, we’ve never been less happy. If we are happy, why are drug abuse and alcohol abuse so rampant in our society? Why do an average of eighty-six Americans commit suicide every day?2
     I would submit to you that one major reason for all this unhappiness is that life for most people today is meaningless. Money doesn’t make life meaningful. Neither does pleasure. Neither does sex or status or power or any of the other things we chase after. When people live meaningless lives, they respond with depression, aggression, and addiction. Depression is sometimes acted out by self-destruction (suicide); aggression is often played out through acts of destruction (crime and other antisocial behavior); addiction is the result of trying to numb the pain of meaninglessness with alcohol, drugs, or other compulsive behavior.
     In order to be happy, our goal should not be happiness, but completeness. When we are complete people, our lives have meaning, and our souls experience that sense of satisfaction and peace that produces true happiness.