What Makes Us Happy?

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What was the happiest day of your life?

The “politically correct” answers would be, “the day I got married,” or “the day my children were born.” Fact is, I didn’t realize at the time how happy my spouse and children would make me. What about, “when I got my first job,” or “when I retired?” Similar answers apply.

In reality, for most of us happiness can’t be captured in such events. Happiness is ongoing, a more permanent thing. Yet, though the definition of happiness may be illusive, we all think we know it when we see it. Teens are certain their first love is “the love of their life.” The new house “couldn’t make us happier.” In my new job, “I’ve never been happier.”

Happiness is one of the most written about topics these days. It’s discussed endlessly on talk shows and in homilies and graduation speeches. The main question is, what makes us happy? There are so many answers. But why so much concern now about happiness? Did our parents and grandparents have discussions about happiness?

Maybe not, but happiness has always been a hot topic, always at the top of any list of human aspirations. Aristotle, the famous Greek philosopher who lived almost 400 years before Christ, is quoted as saying that “happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.”

Robert Waldinger

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So back to the question, “What makes us happy?” Here are some thoughts by psychiatrist Robert Waldinger presented in a TED talk in 2015. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. The nonprofit organization with that name sponsors conferences on those topics around the world.

A recent survey asked millennials what their most important life goals were, Waldinger said,

“and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich. And another 50 percent of those same young adults said that another major life goal was to become famous.”

Waldinger is director of an unusual study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development, claiming to be “the longest study of adult life that's ever been done.”

“For 75 years, we've tracked the lives of 724 men, year after year,” he said, “asking about their work, their home lives, their health, and of course asking all along the way without knowing how their life stories were going to turn out.

“About 60 of our original 724 men are still alive, still participating in the study, most of them in their 90s. And we are now beginning to study the more than 2,000 children of these men.” Waldinger is the fourth director of the study.

“What are the lessons that come from the tens of thousands of pages of information that we've generated on these lives?” he asks. “Well, the lessons aren't about wealth or fame or working harder and harder. The clearest message that we get from this 75-year study is this: Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period.

“It turns out that people who are more socially connected to family, to friends, to community, are happier, they're physically healthier, and they live longer than people who are less well connected. And the experience of loneliness turns out to be toxic.”

It's the Quality That Matters

The study also shows that it’s the quality of those relationships that matter, and they protect our bodies as well as our minds. And as in marriage, quality relationships usually require a lifetime of work.

So what’s the status of happiness these days? Some see the increased amount of “screen time” in our society as a threat to relationships. Not necessarily. As long as we’re in control, social media can enhance our relationships with family and friends.

But for most of us searching for God, even quality relationships with spouses, family and friends aren’t enough. The famous quote ascribed to St. Augustine seems as applicable now as it did in his day: “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

Human relationships are an important way of relating to God, but many feel the need to connect with the mysterious, transcendent God of the Hebrew and Christian bibles, and that’s where religion comes in.

One derivation of the word “religion” is the Latin verb, religare, or “bind together.” And that’s what religion does, or should do. It binds together those who are searching for God, helping in the search, inviting all to joyful worship and together to look forward to a joy that, as Jesus says in John’s gospel, “can’t be taken from you.”