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The Key to Happiness Is Self-Forgetfulness
“What in the world? Where are we?” My husband and I were incredulous. We’d reached our destination, but it wasn’t the bustling event center we’d expected. Instead, it was a yellowing field, barren except for the few cows who stood staring at us while chewing their cud.
It was the early 2000s, and Mark and I were weary. We’d left our kids and demanding careers back in Japan and had flown to the United States to attend a conference that promised to quench our thirsty souls. An hour before arriving at this cow pasture, we’d paid extra for a GPS at the airport car-rental kiosk. Mind you, this was before smartphones, so this device resembled a walkie-talkie and gave us directions only audibly. But we figured the newfangled technology would outperform the printed directions we’d shoved in our suitcase a continent and ocean ago. We were wrong.
We set out for a specific destination. We trusted the wisdom of the GPS. We listened and proceeded exactly as the voice instructed. Yet we arrived at the wrong place. As it turned out, the limited data available to GPS in its early days meant one address sometimes led to more than one location. Classic, right?
No doubt something like this has happened to you too. You envisioned a specific destination, followed someone’s wisdom (maybe your own) to get there, but when you arrived, it wasn’t what you’d hoped for.
So it is with happiness. We desperately want to be happy. We long for it, hunt for it, go to great lengths for it. But we struggle to arrive at our hoped-for happiness destination.
What Is Happiness?
The major dictionaries say happiness is something like “the feeling or showing of pleasure or contentment.” But if you look up “happy” in a thesaurus, you’ll find at least a dozen strong synonyms. If you’re happy, you may say you’re cheerful, delighted, ecstatic, glad, joyous, upbeat, content, peaceful, satisfied, serene, or even tickled pink. So many possible ways to express one elusive notion.
We desperately want to be happy. We long for it, hunt for it, go to great lengths for it. But we struggle to arrive at our hoped-for happiness destination.
In 1962, Charles Schulz, creator of the Peanuts comic strip, published Happiness Is a Warm Puppy. In this little book, Charlie Brown and his friends define happiness in simple ways. In one comic strip, Lucy says, “Happiness is a fuzzy sweater.” In another, Snoopy says, “Happiness is walking in the grass in your bare feet.” And in yet another, Linus claims, “Happiness is an ‘A’ on your spelling test.” No doubt each of these definitions made you smile, as they did me.
But is happiness merely the feeling or showing of pleasure or contentment? Is it simply feeling good? Can we be happy just by holding a warm puppy or wearing a fuzzy sweater? If you’re going to search for happiness, how you define it matters. There’s a massive difference between momentary pleasure and lasting contentment, yet the dictionaries say happiness may involve both experiences. Truthfully, it’s lasting contentment we’re after, and the momentary buzzes we chase fall woefully short of that goal.
Not Found in Seeking Self
Our attempts at happiness are usually short-sighted because when happiness fades, we’re left disappointed. Whether it’s Schulz’s warm puppy, a career promotion, a new relationship, or the perfect day on vacation, the pleasure inevitably fades away. Pleasure’s temporary nature impedes our pursuit of lasting contentment. But more than that, our pursuit’s self-focused nature holds us back.
“Do what makes you happy,” we say—emphasis on you. We look within ourselves and contemplate what will make us happy as individuals. “Will the puppy make me happy, or the fuzzy sweater? What do I need to be happy?”
Yet this self-focus eventually sours, because it inevitably leads us to a selfish and sinful way of life. Sin is any thought, word, or deed “in opposition to God’s benevolent purposes for his creation. . . . [Sin] is the basic corrupting agent in the entire universe.” Sin plagues us all, and it particularly plagues our pursuit of happiness, because sin makes us unhappy.
A self-focus may feel good for a time, but we all know the bad taste of a guilty conscience after a particularly selfish act, season of self-absorption, or misdeed at another’s expense. But if happiness isn’t found in pleasing ourselves, where can we find it?
Made for More
The counterintuitive truth in our quest for happiness is that the more we forget ourselves, the more we deny ourselves even, the happier we’ll be. Happiness is the result of self-forgetfulness. The less you and I put ourselves at the center, the more we center ourselves on God and other people, the happier we’ll be.
Happiness can’t be achieved by pursuing it for its own sake, because it’s the overflow of a life lived with an outward focus. Happiness is the fruit produced by a life rooted in the deep soil of reality. And here’s what’s real: We have a Creator who made us to be eternally, immovably replete with happiness.
So how do we get there? Just like my husband and I ended up at the wrong destination on our trip years ago, many of us have ended up at the wrong destination when it comes to happiness. As we did with the early version of GPS, you may have followed well-meaning instructions perfectly. But now you’re standing in a field, full of disappointment, and in need of a new set of directions. By God’s grace and provision, we have them.
Where to Aim
C. S. Lewis died as a well-known Christian writer and apologist, but he was first a skeptical atheist, then a theist, and only after that a follower of Christ. Lewis said one reason for our frustration with happiness is that we “fix our minds on this world.” He wrote, “Most people, if they had really learned to look into their own hearts, would know that they do want, and want acutely, something that cannot be had in this world. There are all sorts of things in this world that offer to give it to you, but they never quite keep their promise.”
Lewis went on to describe how marriages, careers, and travel do indeed offer temporary happiness, but they inevitably leave us wanting something more. He finally concluded, “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
The counterintuitive truth in our quest for happiness is that the more we forget ourselves, the happier we’ll be.
To aim directly for happiness is to miss it altogether. It’s to endlessly attempt to grasp the fuzz that keeps slipping away. It’s to expect lasting, internal satisfaction from passing, external circumstances. It’s to mistakenly believe that more self-focus will lead to more happiness. Yet when we pursue earthly happiness in and of itself, we miss it altogether.
But what if we aim higher and farther than this earth has to offer? What if we look way beyond ourselves? What if we aim for heaven? Lewis claims that if we do, the happiness of earth will be thrown in. Real, genuine, lasting happiness on this earth is a by-product of looking away from ourselves and looking up to God.
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