Happiness--and Success

Happiness is the most pursued thing in all the world. All men are looking for it, whether they know it or not. Our Founding Fathers knew its place and importance when they listed it along with life and liberty. Happiness is properly life’s chief pursuit, and there is no special virtue in unhappiness, there is no special virtue in long-faced living.

But like most things, happiness is often misunderstood, often mistaken, and often missed. One doesn’t find it always where he might suppose, and frequently finds it where it seems less likely—but whatever its variations from person to person, real happiness always has with it some indispensable essentials, quite apart from passing or trivial pleasures, quite apart from hilarity or lightheaded laughter, or dangerous thrills, or cynical satisfactions.

Sometimes happiness is confused with what is sometimes called success. But success itself may need another look. Success is not just indiscriminately more and more of everything; it is not just indiscriminately going and getting. It is getting what we want—if we want the right thing. It is arriving where we want—if it’s the right place. And one could scarcely be considered successful if he isn’t happy, and could scarcely be considered happy is he didn’t have a wholeness and wholesomeness of life, integrity, work, service, self-respect, appreciation for other people, love, a sense of belonging, a sense of being wanted and a sense of purpose—permanent, eternal purpose, with faith to survive the sorrows and setbacks and faith to outface fear.

Going, getting, arriving—even these are not so essential as is this: an awareness of being on the way, on the right road. This surely is one of the chief essentials of happiness—with an awareness also that life is purposeful, limitless and everlasting, and that the same sound principles that lead to happiness here lead to happiness hereafter.