The Meaning of Happiness

Happiness Is. Unexpected Answers to Practical Questions in Curious Times
by Shawn Christopher Shea, M.D.

Part I

Defining the Goal of the Quest: The Meaning of Happiness

"The purpose of our lives is to be happy."

- The 14th Dalai Lama

"Happiness is like a sunbeam, which the least shadow intercepts."

- Chinese Proverb

"Will Mulder find happiness? No. That's not for him. He's a questing hero."

- A fan's comment from a Web site on The X-Files

The Nature of the Beast

We are questing beasts. Our lives are frequently a delightful, and sometimes not so delightful, series of quests. Indeed, our lives are not so much a neat series of well delineated quests as they are, more often, a tangled mass of conflicting quests that simultaneously demand our attentions.

Our quests are sometimes ordinary and downright primitive in nature. We search for food, shelter, safety, and sex. Our quests are sometimes elevated and important in nature. We tirelessly work to become school teachers, doctors, entrepreneurs, and homemakers. Our quests are sometimes viewed as trivial in nature—but this does not change how hard we pursue them. We relentlessly search for the golf swing of Tiger Woods, a set of abs like the ones on those annoyingly handsome men smiling astride their Bowflexes, or a wrinkle-free forehead thanks to the wonders of Botox. Our quests are sometimes interpersonal. We look for a good set of friends, colleagues we like and partners to cherish. Finally, our quests are sometimes grand and spiritual in nature. We pray to be compassionate, find the right religion or touch the face of god.

Put all these pressing pursuits together, and it is no wonder that we are frequently tired and just a bit out of sorts. We're pooped. Moreover, by simultaneously pursuing too many of these goals it is easy for any given human being to sabotage his or her ability to successfully pursue one of the most basic yet critical of all the quests—the quest for happiness.

Whether we are working eighty hours a week to get the money to secure our child the best college education that money can buy or relentlessly hunting down a Beanie Baby whose soaring value will undoubtedly secure that very same education, we are preoccupied with a massive set of quests. Not all of these pursuits support each other nor are they necessarily good for ourselves or other creatures on this planet. And, compared to the other creatures on the planet, we seem to spend an inordinate amount of time discussing, prioritizing and, ultimately, picking our quests.

Having practiced clinical psychiatry for over twenty years, I have come to believe that this "questing business" has a good deal to do with our eventual happiness or unhappiness. Indeed, when people enter my office, although they seldom use the word quest, their pains are almost always rooted in this "questing business." They are unhappy about what quests they are on, what quests others have foisted upon them, the fact that they are failing with their quests, the fact that others feel they are failing with their quests, the fact that they are afraid that others will feel they are failing with their quests, the fact that they can't pick the right quests, the fact that they have become boxed into pursuing the wrong quests, or the fact that they have picked too many quests. And the most common bottom line is often a simple one: The quest for happiness has eluded them.

Mulder's Dilemma, Spirit's Secret and Happiness Machines

In the historical sense, it is our questing nature that has driven us to achieve some of the most marvelous feats of civilization such as building the Cathedral of Notre Dame, discovering the atom, landing on the Moon, preventing polio, elucidating the concept of democracy, and, of course, creating The Simpsons. But, as we have already hinted, there is a dark side to all this questing business. It is this dark side that brings people into my office. If we want to understand the nature of finding happiness, it is worth our while to explore this dark side in a little more detail.

The dark side of our quests emerges when they become our fixations or our obsessions, when we spend so much time in pursuit of one of them (or several of them) that the most important ones are left starving for our attention. Even noble quests—religion, gold medals, careers, love—can become dangerous if they become a fanatic focus that leads us away from what really matters—God, self-respect, productive work, family, friends and compassion.

It is at such times that we risk becoming like Mulder of The X-Files, who as our perceptive fan cogently stated in the opening epigraph of our chapter, will never be happy, because he is just too ferociously preoccupied with this alien thing. In some respects we are all Mulders. Our culture floods us not with aliens but with pressures to tackle an enormous number of quests, some of which may be alien to our own natures and skills. We frantically—one might say fanatically—try to cram them all into one lifetime. The advertising industry aids this nasty process by transforming simple desires into pressing needs. Before one knows it, life is no longer a quest for happiness; it is a mass of unhappy quests.

So where does all this leave us? It leaves us with the knowledge that questing is pivotal to human nature, which can be both good and bad. Good—if our quests are wisely chosen, manageable and obtainable. Bad if our quests are poorly chosen, unmanageable, and unobtainable. It also leaves us with the reassuring knowledge that, if falling prey to our own quests leads to unhappiness, it also follows that the ability to more wisely choose our quests may lead to happiness. Truth be told, because we have the ability to choose our personal quests and how much time we allot to each of them, we have the ability to determine - to a surprisingly large degree - the extent of our own happiness.

© 2004 Health Communications, Inc.

About the Author

Shawn Christopher Shea, M.D. is an internationally acclaimed speaker and innovator in the field of suicide prevention and mental health. His two previous books, The Practical Art of Suicide Assessment: A Guide for Mental Health Professionals and Substance Abuse Counselors and Psychiatric Interviewing: The Art of Understanding, 2nd Edition, are considered classics in the field. Dr. Shea is currently the Director of the Training Institute for Suicide Assessment & Clinical Interviewing (TISA) and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the Dartmouth School of Medicine.