The Truth of Happiness

by Eric Clark

Preface 

The inspiration for this book is to pass on fatherly advice to my children. As a parent, advice is something I give with ease and frequency; maybe my kids would say, with too much ease and frequency. If one is to write a book on advice for our kids that can stand the test of time, what could be a more compelling legacy than to help our kids find the truth to leading a happy meaningful life. In the end, after all the distractions and fluff of our life, true lasting happiness would have to be the one enduring purpose that trumps all other life endeavors.

While I hope to have many years into the future to provide fatherly advice, I became inspired to write about the subtleties of our human interactions that hide below the veneer of our pride and fears. These subtleties, as I see them, are the cornerstone of what determines our ultimate joy in living. This sounds prophetic but it’s really a simple observation of what takes place around us every day. These subtleties of life are not as easy to share with loved ones in the casual conversations of life since, for the most part, they reveal themselves in brief moments of clarity, moments in which we see and experience people for who they are and who we are in our complex pattern of existence. Unfortunately, these glimpses are brief and the tides of our life wash away these insights as we continue with the daily grind. So that’s it. This book was spawned by moments of clarity.

I had no intention of publishing this book, only to bind it and present it as a gift to my children. But read after read, and with my wife’s encouragement, I trusted that it would not offend and hopefully uplift any who would give the book the hour or so it requires to pass over the pages. At times the read is complex and at others I think simple, but always I’m trying to tell my truth about my world that I live in with you and the rest of our community. In truth, I believe my truth in my world is really our truth in our world. I used to think my experiences were just that, mine. In my fifth decade I’ve come to realize that I’m not special. I’m just like everyone else and see and experience the world just as others do. I’ve tried to hold on to those glimpses a little longer from time to time to understand why we don’t use them to guide our daily moments. They are pearls of wisdom we cast aside so as not to lose step with our society’s momentum, its values and its definition of happiness.

The truth of happiness, however, lies in those glimpses, the shooting stars that point the way. This book is a grab at those shooting stars so you can put them in your pocket to meditate on at your leisure.

Trust that I realize your views and mine may not overlap—at all. I’m betting, or really hoping, that if you read the book through to end and meditate on it for a few weeks you’ll take notice of the people in your life differently. Indeed, your life may have meaning in a way it didn’t before; a deeper contentment about a purpose that makes life happier.

Illusions  

This above all, to thine own self be true. 

William Shakespeare 

This book appears to be light reading. The title seems uncomplicated, the book cover is simple and its size makes it a quick read. But that’s all a disguise. The topic is serious and life changing. It’s actually the single most important subject that affects our every thought and action. That said, there’s nothing I share that is deep profound philosophical blather. Though philosophers like Albert Camus attempt to address the meaning of life without a deity and all religions address the meaning of life with a deity, my intent is an experiential exercise rather than citing philosophical or religious prose. Essentially, everything in this book is about what we experience every day and indeed, we are all experts in. Something so common and intimate to us as our existence and its meaning should start with us. To that end, if you disagree with something, know that it is my opinion of what I believe is a shared experience. 

Indeed, that is the crux of it. We share common daily, moment to moment experiences, despite our age, sex, ethnicity, geographic origin, and even religion—if we believe in one. We not only share them among our own tribes, but more and more in this global world market of ours, we share them with people we least likely would have spoken to, dined with or lived with just fifty to hundred years ago. The diversity of people in our lives today begs us to find commonality, a root source of compassion, if not purpose, that can guide us as we seek the all elusive true happiness and a fulfilling life. 

My intent here is not to alienate those rooted in a deep spiritual or religious belief system, nor those who have chosen a more personal belief system. I have therefore kept references to traditional religious and non-religious ideology to a minimum. I apologize if this offends and encourage readers to substitute or meditate on their own beliefs as they ponder these concepts. The ideas presented here are real life experiences that we are all confronted with regardless of what we believe on a personal level. 

So, who among us is not an expert in what makes them happy? For most of us a simple form of happiness happens almost every day. The times we smile or even laugh is probably the best part of our day. We even pay money to be entertained just to get a smile or laugh. Standup comedy venues and comedic plays and movies are as popular now as they were a thousand years ago. It would seem we know how to keep happiness in our lives on a regular basis since we are seemingly all experts and we experience it mostly every day. But this would be a wrong assumption. In reality, it is as though happiness happens to us unpredictably and it leaves us the same way. We often identify happiness as the laugh or smile and not the contented state of mind that essentially is happiness. During our quiet moments, when we have the time to evaluate our life, it’s probably not how many times we laughed that matters most to us. More likely, what matters most is if we are really contented. Does our life have meaning or purpose? If we feel there’s purpose in our life we are likely to feel happy. Sadly, there are too many of us that would answer that question with a maybe? Or, simply no. I would argue that if the question of life’s purpose is baffling to us then it’s likely we are living a life of illusion and not cultivating the things we inherently know are the real source of true happiness, the things that make our life have meaning. 

Ah, I know, you’re thinking, “Of course I’m happy, of course my life has meaning. I’m married to a beautiful person, I have wonderful children, I live in a terrific house, I have an important job and I’m blessed to make enough to live comfortably––by my standards. What else could anyone ask for. Done. Let me put this book down since it’s obviously not for me but some other poor soul who’s more confused about life.” 

There’s no problem with these thoughts; we can feel a deep-seated contentment from family, friends and coworkers. Our jobs can also allow us to leave a mark on society and maybe yours can bring about major lasting changes in whatever you do. Fine. But realize that having family is the easy part. Engaging family, in the way they want, or better, need to be engaged, is the daily challenge. The same is true for friends and coworkers. True happiness comes from interacting with those around us in ways that fulfill them rather than us. This seems counterintuitive but it’s the way we, as people, work. Anything less is an illusion we tell ourselves to conjure up a perception of happiness that is shallow and short-lived. Likewise, the house we choose can make us feel good about ourselves but distract us from the work of building important relationships. The clothes we wear, the apparel we adorn ourselves with, places we go and things we do, can all be traps that tell us one thing, “I’m happy,” but later we feel another. An emptiness that always needs tending to. 

A basic premise for a happy life is a fulfilling life, and that a fulfilling life should be attainable by anyone from any station in life. You needn’t be smart or rich or royal. It’s attainable equally in any country, any culture, and any religion, even if you don’t subscribe to one. Essentially, we needn’t fuss over feeling our life isn’t as good as the next guy because they drive a different car, socialize with different people and take trips to different places. In fact, sometimes what other people do may be for all the wrong reasons. Chasing the wrong kind of happiness may yield an illusory happiness, one that is not likely to leave you with a deep contentment. The illusion of a contentment bought and paid for is—an illusion. It is also an illusion to believe that contentment from one act is better than some other act. Happiness attained through sincerity of heart is equal in measure and depth to all other sincere happiness regardless of one’s station in life. 

A few years ago, I eulogized my Uncle Bob by recalling a memory from my early youth when he and I traveled the countryside of Jamaica. I was eight years of age and visiting my parents’ homeland for the first time that I could remember. My uncle packed me up in his VW Bug and we took a road trip to visit my grandparents deep into the heart of rural Jamaica. We drove winding country roads, and I gazed at people in unfamiliar dress doing unfamiliar things. The hills and trees and even the homes, were all different from my New York City. I was mesmerized—nose pressed to the window staring out at a new world. It was my job on this trip to shift the gears as we climbed hills, descended and took turns. I learned to listen to the engine and anticipate my uncle’s approving nod when it was time to throw the stick into the next gear. Again, I was mesmerized. He allowed me to feel so important and I didn’t want our time together to ever end. In my eulogy, I talked about how my uncle touched me that day. I was just a little kid visiting from the Big City, but he not only made it his duty to take me on trips but included me in the task of driving. He was always a kind and generous person. I loved him and never forgot how important he made me feel, even some forty years later. I didn’t smile or laugh on this trip, but I was truly contented. My uncle was Giving me an experience that changed my life. At eight years of age I was mostly a Taker, dependent on others for all my essential needs, but on that day, I was learning how to Give. 

In this book I reflect on my own experiences which I believe we all share. Does my life have meaning, and can I make it have meaning if it’s falling short of that important goal? Can I bottle the concept and pass it on to those I cherish? This book is my attempt to do just that. A tall order, I know. But our shared common experiences are what bonds us as a people and a world community. We are not all that different since we are, indeed, all human. 

I will refer often to two concepts: Giving and Taking. I capitalize them to emphasize their key role in finding the truth of happiness.

What We Believe  

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all [people] are created equal,

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. 

Thomas Jefferson July 4, 1776 

The concept of happiness can seem abstract; where does it come from and why are we all chasing it? Why is it so important in our lives? Clearly, if something doesn’t make us happy, we shun it. If it does, we want more. Oddly enough we don’t really know why it exists and we are not instinctually able to weave it into our lives whenever we want. I’ve pondered whether happiness is so basic a condition of our existence that it is something like the air we breathe. Maybe it is more like a physical phenomenon, always there regardless of whatever else is around us. Indeed, it seems happiness is the one thing that makes us whole. How we view happiness and how we go about getting it, is the real challenge in life, and every culture and religion seem to have their answer. 

Some people believe in the providence of nature, some, the providence of a divine entity. To the observant eye, we can’t really tell who is who. In our daily grind of life, we share our space with people from all walks of life: all beliefs, cultures, religions and more. Happiness does not discriminate. It’s not a concept that seeks to exclude you for coming from that part of the world or for believing in that “alien” concept. Happiness is universal. Our desire for it is primal. It transcends our limited stereotypes of who should or shouldn’t be experiencing true happiness.  

On the face of it, this can seem calming. We are all equal in this endeavor. But in reality, we live in our own caves with clustered clans that feel we have the secrets to true happiness. Or so we’d like to think. We sometimes deceive ourselves with this thinking since it helps us feel that we have secrets to life that others should try to emulate. It can be an illusion, like many others, that Take rather than Give to fill an urge for our version of purpose.  

If you believe that atheism is the only real grounded scientifically supportable view of the world, then everyone else seems to be followers of folly. If you believe in Buddha, have your own guru or are a follower of beliefs like Judaism, Christianity or Islam, you undoubtedly believe that yours is the way, the only way. Everyone else must be a lost soul. It’s a clannish outlook on the world and it may help us feel more secure about how we’ve chosen to live in it, but objectively, we are likely living an illusion. Just the judgment that you are right and they are wrong is, simply put, a Take from their existence or reason for being. When our beliefs or religion exclude all other beliefs, we are creating an illusion of supremacy, which can give us false comfort. Our beliefs and religious practices needn’t, however, be exclusive of others to find life’s meaning or purpose. The truth of happiness can undoubtedly be found from all walks of life and acceptance of that truth is the first step towards the Give to others that starts the path to true happiness. 

For most of us, we believe what our parents believe. If we are born Jewish, Christian, Muslim or atheist, we are unlikely to find Truth in other beliefs. Ironically, despite their differences and professed primacy, all beliefs have the single goal of believers finding happiness. This happiness may not be explicitly expressed in the tenets or creeds of traditional beliefs, but the outcome of whatever one believes should indeed be a true sincere happiness. Otherwise, how else would one know that they are in sync with their divine source? 

Thus, at least in this singular endeavor, all beliefs are equal in accomplishing our primary purpose of finding true happiness. I know, some will say their beliefs are more original or historically accurate or scientifically sound or simply more providential than all the others. They will add that all other beliefs provide a happiness that is less valuable in our current earthly experience or in a future promised experience. While I’ve tried to choose my words here very carefully so as not to offend, I hope the reader can perceive how these distinctions are a distraction from our primary goal to improve everyone’s life in their current situation. Despite what we personally believe, it would be hard for us to deny what we see everyday: people from all walks of life, all sexes, ages, religions and cultures, all experiencing, even if just briefly, moments of true happiness. Indeed, one may choose to weave any cultural or religious belief system into a quest for their life’s purpose. The ends justify the means, as evidenced by countless examples of balanced happy people from all corners of the world. Provided you are sincere, you should succeed. 

Unfortunately, the unique trap of our human condition is our willingness to substitute illusory happiness for real happiness, something not seen in lower species. We are challenged in our pursuit of happiness to choose, daily or even hourly, whether our acts will be real or illusory.  

Making daily choices seems burdensome but we are quite capable of learning from repetition, much like we do with everything else in our lives. It requires a meditative focus and self-analysis about how we treat others. Any practice, religious or not, that helps achieve this may find success. The alternative is essentially doing the hamster-run in a cage trying to outdo our peers, allowing outside forces to tell you what you should do to be happy. This outside force will likely tell you the more popular you are or the more money you spend, the happier you’ll be. Of course, this belies the basic premise of happiness, which is: it’s attainable by anyone, anywhere, regardless of one’s station in life. 

It should come as no surprise that the word happiness is present in every culture and it’s an experience that crosses every boundary. We essentially all believe something and that something intends us to be successful in life, to be happy. How we achieve it may look different but achieving it is our goal. I believe that no matter our origins, our destiny is the same.

Give or Take 

Whoever pursues justice and kindness 

will find life and honor. 

Proverbs 21:21 

By the time we’ve reached our fourth or fifth decade of life we’ve undoubtedly encountered sufficient diversity of people to know from experience that all is not what our eyes and even ears would have us believe. These senses often reflexively try to conform what we see and hear to our cultural norms and stereotypes. The reality, however, is that people are never really who or what they seem. 

Throughout my life I’ve come in contact with people from all walks of life. I’m a child of immigrants, I have lived in multiple big cities and worked in places that routinely employ and service the most educated and successful individuals, as well as the least. The nature of my work is such that I spend many hours with colleagues at all hours of the day and night, often under stressful situations. We become like family to each other, knowing much of our personal life choices and experiences, while supporting each other through the difficulties of our day. Our clients come to us at a very vulnerable stage in their life and the veneer of pride is often put aside as they cope with life’s immediate uncertainties. My work is most rewarding for these very reasons, people are mostly just who they are.  

While I have always tried to engage with all equally at work, I have been confounded by the fact that those whom I thought should be happy were sometimes miserable and those that should be struggling just to survive have oftentimes had a positive outlook on life and found pleasure in the smallest of things. These unexpectedly contented people, I’ve noticed, had one consistent quality, they seemed in sync with themselves and their place in the world. It appeared to me that happiness followed from how people act and not from their circumstances. By this I mean that you can tell by people’s actions if they’re in sync with themselves, not by assumptions based on a lack or excess of material wealth or formal education. In essence, we cannot easily change our circumstances, but we can determine how we respond to them. This may seem obvious, but there’s a catch. How people act can be distilled into two very different behaviors. Happy people seem to be more generous in their thoughts, words and deeds. Unhappy people are not. One is a Giver, the other a Taker. 

Maybe this doesn’t seem all that foreign to us. We meet people in our lives who we quickly sum up to be fun or friendly and we like spending time with them. They make us laugh, they do exciting things and overall, make us feel more whole. What’s this all about? Why are we almost chemically attracted to them? My instinctual guess is that they are similar to us on a scale of Give and Take. They may even have just a little more Give if we really like them, but essentially, they make us feel comfortable. They are not Taking from us excessively in thoughts, words or deeds. On the other hand, we unfortunately meet people who we instinctively dislike. There’s something about how they carry themselves, how they engage others and how they treat you specifically. If they were Givers on an equal scale to yourself, you would probably enjoy their company. But that’s not who they are. Compared to you, they are Takers. They likely monopolized the conversation with their viewpoints, never engage your ideas, and “suck the oxygen out of the room” with constant negativity about anything and everything. It’s no surprise you don’t like them. They are relegated to that “negative energy” kind of person that you could do without in your life. This negative energy person may well find their mate in this world, someone who has a similar Giver/Taker balance, but you’re not them. They may like you because you’re more of a Giver than them—you listen to them patiently, offer to do small gestures for them—but they too would not like someone significantly more negative than themselves. We all shun the excessive Taker with no exception. We are, on the other hand, amused with and drawn to the generous Giver, when compared to our own G/T baseline. 

To go a step further, current brain imaging technology has allowed the neuroscientific community to identify links between specific social activity and brain activity. Their research has found distinct locations in our brain that govern areas of Give and Take. This research has demonstrated that acts of compassion for others, which is indeed an act—a Give, stimulates or activates a specific part of our frontal cortex. This can be distinguished from other areas of the brain that are activated by displaying empathy, which while still a commendable quality, is not an actual act. Empathy is simply a feeling. The distinction seems to matter for brain development. Research also shows that individuals displaying excessive “anti-social” behavior activate their brain in altogether different patterns and actually have smaller areas of the frontal cortex governing compassion. It is believed that compassion begets compassion. Your brain actually grows and more easily facilitates more compassion the more you are compassionate (*). 

All of this is nice, nice that the scientific community is catching up to what we already know, what we’ve been experiencing for our whole existence. In fact, we don’t’ need brain scans to tell us what our own behavioral experience confirms every day in the ebb and flow of our daily lives. Finally, we should not latch on to these scientific findings to prove or disprove anyone’s belief or religious foundation. The world is a complicated place, people are complicated beings and any simple conclusions about brain size and the meaning of life almost assuredly will miss the mark.  

So, there you have it. The world can simply be categorized as a big Give or a big Take. All actions can be simplified to these two simple motives, and I put forth to you, surmise and postulate as they say in the philosophical world, that regardless of where you are on the scale of Give and Take, movement towards the Give will give you pleasure that is lasting. Movement towards the Take will give you pleasure that is fleeting.  

I also believe that any purpose in life must be definable in every act of life. In essence, there are no empty meaningless actions. Everything we do from dawn to dusk is an example of life’s purpose. It matters not whether it is mundane or exhilarating, it all has a purpose because it is all definable by Give or Take. We needn’t wait around for pivotal moments in our existence to prove to us that life has a purpose. Our actions are either self-sustaining, a Give to ourselves, or our actions are compassionate, a Give to others. Alternatively, our actions can be self-degrading or self-indulgent, a Take from ourselves or a Take from others. There is no in-between here. Some acts are subtle, merely thoughts, and some are grand and impact many lives. Either way, these acts are a Give or Take on a small or large scale. For example, a newborn suckles at her mother’s breast for nourishment. The child Takes, the mother Gives. This is the simplest and first of all life acts and it conforms to the Give or Take paradigm. In this simple act, purpose is born. Someone Gives for life to endure; someone Takes to ensure survival. I use the word Take “to ensure survival,” because it is a Take. But it is the only type of Take that is actually not a selfish indulgence since it seeks survival at the most primal level. The motives of this first act of Give and Take define the ideal for all Gives and Takes. The Give should at its best be a Give to sustain life, the Take, at its noblest, should be a Take simply to sustain life. 

For me, it has become clear that happiness is primarily based on being a Giver more than being a Taker. When I’ve focused more on me and mine, materially or not, I’ve come away feeling a temporary illusory happiness. When I’ve focused on you and yours and with little or no recognition of me and mine, I’ve come away feeling a deep and lasting sense of calm, emotional balance and happiness. The former often has required me to “redose” me and mine over and over to keep the illusory happiness from fading. The latter is always uplifting, energizing and self-regenerating.  

Socrates* called the Take [pleasure seeking behavior] a form of relative happiness and, as such, its tendency is to fade with time. It’s a happiness that is relative to what came before. As time elapses, the relative before-and-after become part of our past, a distant memory yielding a happiness that is no longer tangible. I would add to this that not all acts yielding relative happiness are without virtue. We eat, for example, when we are hungry. Before, we have hunger pangs, after, we are satiated. We are happy in the moment but the feeling fades. Is this type of relative happiness a bad thing? I’d argue that it is not. It meets the basic rule of Taking for primal survival. Some Takes are necessary, as we mentioned above with the suckling newborn. An overindulgence in food may alter the virtue in eating, making the Take less noble. So, be it relative or not, I believe the idea of happiness needs to go further—deeper; it needs to address the purpose of the act. 

Alternatively, Socrates called the Give [philosophical pleasure], a form of non-relative happiness. There is no craving for something before, like many Takes, so there is no after to compare. The experience reflects a state of our being or our soul, as Socrates worded it. I would add that it changes who we are and becomes part of our nature. As such, it is a happiness that doesn’t fade. If anything, it uplifts and seeks to regenerate itself. 

It took over two thousand years for this idea to catch on in the academic community. Philip Brickman was a modern-day pioneer in this area of study. A distinguished professor of social psychology, he published a study* in 1978 about lottery winners and disabled accident victims and proved what Socrates had already said—happiness stems not from what we have but what we do. Brickman later* opined and proved that commitments to people, primarily, are the only source of deep satisfaction that give us purpose and ultimate joy. 

While Brickman theorized about life’s purpose in academic jargon, my life experience has distilled it all down to a simple Give or Take, and to me, this Giver/Taker (G/T) concept of life, is life’s primary Truth, and it is the truest way to happiness. This almost seems, again, kind of trite or a cliché. For example, we’ve often heard of or seen portrayed, individuals who after years of success accumulating significant material wealth, achieve great joy from being a Giver. Sometimes giving much or all of their wealth to charity. Some achieve this goal early in life, some discern the impermanence of their wealth close to life’s final chapter and only then realize they are still chasing an illusion. To be clear, the choice before us is not to be a perfect noble Giver relegated to poverty, or a perfect Taker living in lavish luxury. Life is not so simple. We all exist somewhere in-between. Our Giver/Taker status evolves throughout our lives, but for many, it never really changes. While a fulfilling life is a relative concept and means something different depending on your origins, I have no doubt that whoever you are, wherever you live and whatever you believe, movement on the scale from Taker to Giver is the primary way to fulfillment and lasting joy. 

I’ve concluded that my life purpose is to Give, and to always try to Give more than I Take. On the arc of my life, I would like there to be an always increasing Giver/Taker balance. Achieving this goal is not easy. Life’s obligations, distracting realities and my frailties often lead me astray. Often! Being a Giver is not a natural human trait but one that is learned and that needs nurturing, and for me, that nurturing comes in large part from meditation and self-analysis in any form it can be attained. I rely on family, friends, coworkers, and neighbors to inspire and motivate me with stories of Giving that permeate our lives at every level. It’s a religion of life, and many formal religions seek to move our Giver/Taker balance in the direction of Giving more and Taking less. At their best, they serve to reinforce the primacy of life’s purpose: to Give and not Take. 

That’s it. Simple. If your life’s purpose is to find a lasting sincere happiness, then perfecting this learned behavior would seem a primary goal.