Happiness & Maturity

I was pacing up to the top of a hill with a man clothed in the bright white habit of a medieval monk. My pursuit of truth and the strands of honesty that people offered me had led to this man. Only a few weeks earlier an honest soul had told me that "the smartest man” he had ever met was this monk, who was now ponderously pacing up this hill with me. What does one ask such a person? You ask a superlative. So I reached back, plucked one of my trusty favorites from my quiver, and let loose.

"What has been the happiest moment of your life?"

A brief chuckle preceded his response. He was obviously amused by my simplicity.

“Well, what would you say if I told you that this moment right now is the happiest?”

“Then I’d think you’re a saint...”

Hearty laughter ensued...

We eventually made it to the top of the hill. While we were up there looking around at the surrounding scenery he explained what he meant by his response. What follows is a summary of how I understood what he said to me.

Our capacity for happiness and our maturity go hand in hand. The more mature we are, the greater our capacity for happiness. When we are young and immature we are made happy by simple things, such as stepping in the snow or playing in the mud, because those simple goods of experience exceeded our immature capacity for happiness. Those things fail to make us happy now because they’re insignificant compared to how much our capacity for happiness has matured. Stepping in a whole bunch of snow or in a massive mud pit isn’t going to help us either. Merely multiplying small goods quantitatively has no effect. Only higher quality goods can provide us with mature happiness.

This monk then shared some moments in his life when he “felt” the happiest, i.e. moments when a good surpassed his capacity for happiness. However, since right now—while we were talking—he had a greater capacity for happiness than at any other moment in his life, he stood by his claim that “right now” was the happiest moment in his life.

This connection is incredibly relevant to everyone’s life. Living only in “the pursuit of happiness” habituates us to seeking the goods that satisfy our current maturity level. If we are immature—which we all have been at some point—then we become habituated to small goods. Unfortunately, we end up addicted to those little goods and endlessly try to find happiness again by filling our lives with more and more of them. Of course, we never will find mature happiness by filling our lives with only those little goods. It’s like trying to keep warm with a hundred things that have a temperature of 1 degree. You need to find something warmer, something better. A single thing with a temperature of 100 degrees would keep you warmer—and happier—than a hundred lukewarm things.

So how do you find greater goods? You pursue the Truth. By refining your honesty with objective Truth, your desires will mature and draw you towards increasingly greater goods. It can be a painful movement sometimes, since it entails severing our desires for lesser goods and training our desires in accordance with our Truth refined honesty, but the joy and peace found in the heart of that Good and True happiness is what each and every one of us has been born for.

Only in the pursuit of Truth will you grow into the Happiness you were created for.

Truth & Happiness

A couple weekends ago I was standing in front of 120 seventh graders with their dozen or so chaperones. They were on a retreat preparing for Confirmation and what I was about to say was supposed to not only begin their day of retreat, but also initiate their whole Confirmation process. These were new Confirmation students who had not even begun their formal education process in the Roman Catholic faith yet. What does one say to them?

"How many of you here are happy?"

That's what I started with. Why not just get right to the heart of the matter? However, I didn't want to leave it as a simple yes or no reply, so I continued, "On a scale of one to ten, how many here would say they're a 10?"

"How about a 9?"

"An 8? Ok, that's good. We have one hand up here."

"How about a 7? We got 2 this time, that's a little better."

"A 6?"

"5?" Not a single other person had raised their hand yet...

"Ok, how about we stop there for now..."

Happiness is so incredibly elusive. Is it any surprise when as a race in general we've forgotten how to treat the cause and instead just endlessly treat the symptoms? I just read today how we're now implanting "pacemakers" in the brain to dispel depression and make people "happy." Why are using artificial methods to move from emotional lows to "normals" deemed acceptable while artificial methods to move from "normals" to highs is quite often illegal? Both fail to identify the cause of the person's situation and attempt to make things better by divorcing material effects from the actions that produce them. It is those actions which are the most essential aspect of the situation. Actions are how we form our characters and habituate our minds and bodies to various physical reactions. Our actions form both the psychological state and the chemically material emotive response to a greater degree than our current "medical" practices care to admit.

This is also how the pursuit of Truth leads to Happiness.

Happiness is the result of acting in accordance with the conclusions drawn from the painful process of refining our honesty into the objective Truth of our existence. If we are stuck in a false subjective "truth" and hide behind the scars we earned by becoming honest, then we will constantly have a "worm" in the back our brain that will need to be electrocuted by a "pacemaker" in order for us to find "happiness." We will live in an illusionary world where nothing is true, and everything needs to be embraced by quotes. The pursuit of Truth, however, is an action that gives our soul peace despite the pain of refinement. Pascal brilliantly saw the causes of certainty and peace. Truth alone brings certainty: the sincere quest for truth alone brings peace. (599/908) That quest is an action that brings peace. The object of that quest is Truth which brings certainty. The actions borne of those certain truths bring happiness.

Brave the fire of pursuit to extinguish the cause of your endless unrest.

Honesty & Truth

I've always liked to make a distinction between Honesty and Truth.

Honesty requires the courage to bear your soul. It is the first step in a whole-hearted pursuit of God. It is, however, an extremely difficult first step. That is why I do not find it surprising that many people cease the journey and choose to rest in a subjective "truth." The supreme effort required to openly "own" all personal experiences, secrets, and perspectives is soon followed by the painful experience of having those perspectives begin the "refinement" process towards objective truth. This, unsurprisingly, causes a psychological stubbornness in the soul of the seeker. Becoming openly honest is quite often the first psychologically painful experience a person endures. That is why so many people cling to their unrefined opinions. Things that have been earned with innumerable tears are tenaciously clung to. However, if they never mature beyond their own perspective, then they will never find God. Instead, they will cling to their own scars, experiences, and feelings while anesthetizing their desire for the God of objective Truth with a false belief in the subjectivity of "truth."

They choose to hide behind honesty.

Finding the Truth requires the courage to step beyond honesty and to allow your perspective to be shaped by the objective reality of others. However, it also requires the wisdom to realize that not only is your own "honest" perspective full of illusions and selfish psychological defensive schemes that you are unable to pierce through on your own no matter how "honest" you may be, but also that everyone else struggles with similar illusions to varying degrees. Prudence, too, is required in order to recognize that the most practical way to abolish these illusions is to focus on piercing the illusions you did not create yourself. Even the wisest man in the world can not dispel his own illusions as quickly and effectively as an honest fool may. Our illusions defend us from ourselves. We need others to see through them as well as the humility to realize they can. Thus, the pursuit of Truth must be a communal activity of the wise and honest. Those who realize these things begin the difficult--and often quite painful--refinement of subjective honesty into objective Truth.

They choose to live by the Truth.