We’re told from an absurdly young age to find our life’s purpose; this message is continually drilled into our brains at every educational milestone. Then we’re taught as adults that we should keep steady goals to maintain a certain level of accepted productivity that will lead us to the picture-perfect life well lived. And we reach for these goals endlessly, even when our life is feeling very purposeless.
And what greater goal is there than happiness? It is the crème de la crème of life objectives, after all. It is used as the carrot dangled in front of us in every commercial and every advertisement and every institution. We want happiness, we need it, we deserve it, and most importantly, we CAN obtain it – all of us, whenever we want. If you don’t have it, then you are the problem that needs to be straightened out. It is one of the most dangerous stories stitched into the very fabric of Western society.
Happiness is never represented as it should be – a fleeting emotion that creates this beautiful buffer between the harsh realities of our daily lives; one that many find hard to obtain, and almost all find even harder to make stick around.
A common definition of happiness that has found its way floating around the internet is “reality minus expectations.” Now this definition clearly has some flaws, but it sure taps into something we all know about happiness. No matter how awe-inspiring the moment in front of us is, if it didn’t meet our expectations of that moment, then any enjoyment of it is accompanied by this far-reaching disappointment.
It would seem that in many or most cases, the problem isn’t what’s in front of us in the least. After all, we live in a world that by definition is an utter miracle. We are surrounded by the perfect environment for us to flourish and thrive in a universal sense. Yet it is our expectations that fling us ‘back to reality,’ back to the moment-to-moment hardships that cut deep and sting us in a way that seems entirely unfair.
Perhaps our scale wouldn’t be so tipped in the favor of expectations if we had not built entire storylines around happiness as the end all be all of life objectives. Your life will never feel perfect if you think a perfect life is a life that is always happy. I don’t believe your life will ever be perfect if you even think that a perfect life is a life where you’re mostly happy. But what if you your goal was to always grow intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, mentally? What if your goal was to help others more than you hurt them? It would be a simple goal, sure. It would probably be pretty easy to meet, also. But man, if we all shared that one simply, easy, little goal we would see the entire world change overnight.
Instead we find ourselves on a race to nowhere. We reach that next accomplishment only to find that we still lie awake at night wondering what it’s all for. And these stories fail us over and over again because it makes us look at ourselves in the mirror and wonder where we went wrong. We hide our pain and we hide our worries because if you’re not happy, then you’re the problem, and who wants to be that? There is something very inhumane about plastering on a smile, yet it is the absolute expectation – we even promote research about how faking a smile can lead to genuine feelings of happiness. These are the lessons we are fed on our Facebook feeds.
I have decided that happiness will no longer be one of my goals, and it certainly is not my purpose. I want to be fueled by my own personal growth. I want to be incited by how much I can dissect the stories around me from what is real, finding myself on a constant journey towards truth and understanding in a way that goes deep, far past the shallow thoughts we allow to occupy our minds when we idle. I want to help people, for no other reason than being a human being can fucking suck sometimes and it is all of our responsibilities to make this life a little easier to get through.
And I don’t think that will make me happy all the time, but I don’t think anything will. And maybe it’s better that way. Perhaps the world would be a happier place if we found meaning outside of happiness.
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