How to Be Happy

A recent student exercise was on a study of happiness: what makes you happy? It is presumably central to human existence, since it is one of the three inalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence: “the pursuit of happiness.” The Alpha course introductory session I recently attended started with the same question. It seems the thing everyone is asking.

The academic study cites a “wide variety of factors.” “Income, job satisfaction, and possessions”; “wealth, jobs and relationships.” It notes that these are the factors used in the World Happiness Report.

Which is not really helpful, since it is tautological. It begins with the unproven assumption that these are the factors that lead to happiness. 

I think the factors cited are somewhat off the mark. It is pretty well established that wealth or possessions do not lead to happiness. Relationships do, but then relationships can also be the source of deep unhappiness as well.

The answer is so simple; yet the misdirected focus on the material is why so many people are unhappy currently. This is why the rates of depression are soaring year by year.

Three things bring happiness: art, religion, and relationship. 

Art: we feel happiness listening to some music we like, or watching an engrossing movie. Even if it is just “entertainment,” we are transported to some other, better place. There is a world we connect with then, and that is where joy comes from. It is the spiritual world, the world of the imagination.

Religion: one could substitute the more generic, “meaning.” If you have a sense of meaning or purpose in your life, happiness ensues. Materialism strips the world of meaning. 

Relationships: a materialist perspective will hear this as “sex.” Substituting sex for relationship is devastating to happiness. All that is left is constant betrayal—relationships become a source of unhappiness. 

Happiness is from the spirit. Unhappiness is being dispirited.