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.