Happiness--and the Paradox of Comparison

A sentence written some two or more centuries ago is significant in the search for the happiness that all of us so much seek. “If one only wished to be happy,” it says, “this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”

This suggests, of course, that the comparative element always enters in⎯that we are happy or unhappy merely by comparison with other people, with what others are or aren’t, with what others have or haven’t. This paradox is both fact and fallacy, because for happiness there must be some set standards, some basic essentials. Yet neither can we quite keep out comparisons.

In the later years of World War II, the latest models of many things were old and outdated by present comparisons. Yet if we had the latest, we felt comparatively pleased⎯until later and better things again began to be. Then what we had was soon again not good enough.

This is not necessarily a negative quality of character. We ought to want progress and improvement. We ought, in a reasonable way, to want not only the better but the best. A controlled, intelligent discontent is a constructive quality of character, and a complete complacency is a negative quality of character.

But if we make ourselves unhappy or run ourselves deeply into debt or restlessly run from place to place, simply for comparative purposes, we shall not be likely to find the peace, the happiness, the contentment, the accomplishment we so much seek. And when the discontent of wanting something is with us, we should be sure it is something worth wanting.

We should be discontented with ignorance. We should seek wisdom, understanding, seek learning, “even by study and also by faith.” We should seek improvement both of mind and of matter, and be grateful for gifts and talents and opportunities and all the Lord God has given. But because we can’t be everything that everyone else is, or have everything that everyone else has, we should not brood about it. Nobody has everything that everybody else has.

To conclude with our opening quote: “If one only wished to be happy, this could be easily accomplished; but we wish to be happier than other people, and this is always difficult, for we believe others to be happier than they are.”