The Pursuit of Happiness

Why Should I Pursue Happiness When So Much of the World Is Suffering?

It almost seems selfish today, doesn’t it? Pursuing your own happiness? Like what right do you have to do that?

Actually, you have every right. It’s given to us, by our Creator, guaranteed in the US Constitution, proudly proclaimed in the US Declaration of Independence.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men 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.

Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

Why would the US founders put that little statement in such a high place of prominence? This is pretty prime real estate after all. They literally come out with guns blazing towards King George and tell him…it’s their right to be happy? Of all the things they could have included, they chose to put forth the idea that happiness is a fundamental human right, given to us by our Creator. It must be immensely important, right?

On the one hand, we’ve seen things all of our lives that feed into this idea of personal happiness. Good sales and marketing is counting on the idea that we should be happy.

Take that vacation!

Get this anti-aging skin cream!

Buy this sports car!

These messages pummel us on a daily basis. Every piece of marketing you see is aimed at selling you on the fact that the thing they’re selling you is going to somehow make you happier and more content. It gets to the point where we tune so much of this out because for so long in our lives, we’ve bought into the message, only to find ourselves continually unfulfilled and perpetually disappointed.

What they’re really selling you is an illusion. An illusion of happiness that will never truly be fulfilled. Stuff breaks. People get old. There’s always more accessories to chase.

Stuff can bring you happiness, for sure. I love the feeling of unboxing a new gadget or taking a new car for a spin. Lying on a beach in the hot sun near a palm tree is my idea of heaven on earth. I do get gratification from things, people, and places, as I’m sure you do.

But is this the pursuit of happiness that our founders had in mind? The kind of happiness that they used the above-the-fold space to promote? Or did they have something much more complex in mind?

As far back as 5th century B.C., Greek philosophers referred to “eudaimonia,” the Greek term for “happiness,” connoted as performing the right actions that result in the well-being of an individual. The idea is that happiness is something virtuous, something based in some sort of morality, to be used to enrich the life of the individual. In this system, as the individual reaches happiness, they then return the blessings of that happiness back to the world, thereby creating a “greater good” in the world around that individual.

Hmmmm…greater good…greater good. Where have I heard that?

It’s almost as if the founders believed that providing an individual with an environment where they can explore, invent, discover, and create prosperity would benefit both the individual and society. Weird.

To the founders, happiness went far beyond the acquisition of “stuff”. It was NOT a selfish, consumerism type of happiness that they were speaking of. It was an ethical, intelligent, personally and socially responsible achievement to work towards.

It was the farmer toiling in an open field on the land that he bought and paid for with hard work, sowing and reaping. It was feeding his family with the fruits of his hard work and giving a little away to the neighbor across the road who fell on hard times.

It was the innovative mind creating a solution to a problem and then returning that solution to the multitudes who were affected by that same problem.

The business person, unencumbered by regulations and restrictions, building an organization that allowed hundreds of employees to pursue their own happiness for themselves and their families while also serving the economy with beneficial goods and services.

Now, I can hear voices saying “yeah, well look at how that turned out. Robber barons, exploitation, enslavement, corruption. That’s what that system of freedom and the pursuit of happiness gets you. Look where that brought us.”

It’s true that man will always tend towards inhumanity towards other men. We are of a sin nature, and while we have that sin nature in us, we will drift towards those things - oppression, exploitation, and corruption. It’s an unfortunate part of living in a fallen world, bent and broken by sin. There is no system on this earth that we won’t pervert; no group that we won’t exploit; and no opportunity we won’t corrupt. Evidence and history has shown this over and over, and to think otherwise is naïve and foolish.

In fact, John Adams, second US president and founding father, said:

This statement reveals that our founders were well acquainted with the nature of humanity. They knew and believed that what they were fighting for and building would only hold up if the people who owned the systems owned and operated them from a place of moral uprightness, compassionate justice, and a true love for and responsibility to the individuals within those systems.

They also realize that while this should be the standard that humanity should strive towards, the desire to rule over each other cruelly and unfairly was ever-present and probable. So while they pushed and hoped for the “better angels” to guide the future citizens of the United States and the rest of the world, humanity needed major checks and balances. Hence the brilliance of our US system with all of the INTENTIONAL complexities like:

• Three separate but equal branches of government

• An electoral college

• Representative government over a straight democracy

• A filibuster

• Maximum power at the lowest level possible (the individual and family) and minimum power at the highest (federal)

They understood that “gumming up the works” would slow down the encroachment of a system that they spent their very lives and treasure battling. If the people had some sense of morality and a standard of ethics, and they were given as much freedom on the individual level as possible, the tide of humanity would surely rise and it would bring all other ships with it, which, for a good 100 years or more, is what happened.

Generally. Overall. Warts and all, the United States and the environment we worked hard to foster brought one of the greatest advancements to the human condition in all of human history.

The pursuit of happiness is vital to us all. It is a right, not given to us by men. It is NOT selfish, but as we’ve just discussed, actually beneficial to everyone when done right.

It’s not guaranteed, which is why the founders said we must PURSUE it. The flip side of pursuing our own happiness is knowing that we might fail, and fail hard. The pursuit of happiness often comes with a face full of concrete and deep scars. I’ve been there. It’s not fun. The scars are very real.

But the alternative is unfortunately what’s leading much of our friends and family into the abyss. They would rather pursue safety and the guarantee of a risk-free life. As Ben Franklin so presciently and accurately said:

And that’s where we find ourselves. We have entire swaths of our society that have chosen to put their heads in the sand and pursue the safe, the comfortable, the convenient. Yet the tragic thing is, we seem to be more miserable than ever, don’t we? We find ourselves content to give up liberty for safety. In the end we’ll have neither.

This is why “the pursuit of happiness” appears above-the-fold to introduce one of the most dangerous and rebellious documents ever created. It’s THAT important. The day we stop pursuing our own individual happiness is the day that our soul dies. When our soul dies, so does our liberty. And when liberty dies, humanity descends into a black, faceless, terrifying void.

Are we closer to that void, or are we closer to the vision of the founders? If we’re closer to the void, then what do we do? How do we turn this machine around?

It starts with you. Right now. Today. You have to decide to pursue your own happiness. You have to decide to quit playing it safe, whatever that means to you. You have believe in your abilities, and then you have to take risks. You have to quit waiting for someone else to come along and do it for you. You have to realize that you have an obligation to the rest of humanity to do what so many attempt to label as selfish.

Pursue your own happiness. With everything you’ve got. We can’t wait to see what you’ve got, and we can’t wait to see your light.

We’re waiting for you. It’s for the greater good. And your own.