Danny ChaiI kind of stated it for granted that all men pursue happiness. How I should have put it is that this is something I believe, even one of my core beliefs. I’m strongly influenced by Pascal here. He wrote in Pensees, #425:
All men seek happiness. This is without exception. Whatever different means they employ, they all tend to this end. The cause of some going to war, and of others avoiding it, is the same desire in both, attended with different views. The will never takes the least step but to this object. This is the motive of every action of every man, even of those who hang themselves.
And yet, after such a great number of years, no one without faith has reached the point to which all continually look. All complain, princes and subjects, noblemen and commoners, old and young, strong and weak, learned and ignorant, healthy and sick, of all countries, all times, all ages, and all conditions.
Both parts – that all men seek happiness, and that no men achieve it apart from faith – are arguable. But it’s what I believe.
I’ve come to believe in the past year that many people aren’t in tune with their motivations and emotions. I know I haven’t been for most of my life. I always know what I think. I’m less in tune with how I feel. I’ve been reading through dcpark’s readings for his Interpersonal Relationships B-School class (which has been utterly fascinating, but the subject of a separate post) and this one observation made my realization stark: if you follow up the phrase “I feel” with the words “as”, “like”, or “that”, you’re expressing a belief, not a feeling. Those words can’t be used with an emotional word. E.g. you can’t say “I feel that angry.” A phrase “I feel like you’re doing this” is a belief, not an emotion.
What I realized is that I use “I feel like” all the time. At any moment, I’m very aware of my beliefs. But if I can’t use “as”, “like”, or “that”, I’m frequently at a loss. Sometimes I can’t express myself with detail beyond “good” or “bad”. I literally refer to this piece of paper that has a long list of emotional adjectives to help me isolate and express how I’m feeling. It’s been an interesting growth edge for me to learn to recognize and express my emotions.
I’ve also come to see that even emotional people aren’t always in tune with their emotions. Many times we use big categories for our emotions, like happy, sad and angry. We can be aware that we feel negatively, but not understand what exactly that feeling is. Like maybe we say we feel angry when what we really feel is a sense of powerlessness or disrespect. Being emotional doesn’t automatically make one emotionally aware.
The point is, many people (maybe most people?) aren’t in tune with their emotions. And I think the same holds for people’s motivations – many people aren’t in tune with why they do things.
My belief, informed by Pascal, my few psych and philosophy classes, and experience, is that the main motivation of all people is happiness, whether they realize it or not.
One big problem as I see it is that many people don’t realize this, or don’t take the time to think about it enough. Meaning, all people pursue things for happiness, but they don’t think enough about what really makes them happy, and therefore find themselves perpetually unfulfilled, unhappy. When you ask people why they do what they do, and more importantly, why they want to do what they want to do, it’s amazing how frequently they can’t come up with a good answer. Which suggests to me that one, they’re not in tune with their motivations, and two, they haven’t taken the time to think about what really makes them happy.
In the business world, tons of people pursue money and power. My belief is that they do that because, whether they’re aware of it or not, they believe that money and power will bring them happiness. I can think of no other rational reason for their pursuits. But study after study says that people with money (beyond a certain poverty threshold) and power aren’t more happy – in fact, they’re frequently less happy. That’s not where you find happiness – as Barbara Bush has said, no one on their deathbed regrets not spending more time at the office.
What people need to do is sit down and think about what really makes them happy, instead of mindlessly pursuing things that they unconsciously assume will make them happy. And money, power, fame; none of that really make people happy. As a means to happiness, they’re a waste of time.
As a Christian, I believe that (also along the lines of Pascal) Jesus alone brings true happiness. And that strongly influences how I approach many things. For example, I’m completely against guilting people into anything, especially in regards to church or small group. My thing is, if what I believe is true, people just need to see and experience how relationship with Jesus and community with his body is better than anything else. And if that’s not true, I have no business forcing it upon anyone else.
Anyway, in a sense, that’s what I’d like to do with my life. Make people seriously stop and think about what really makes them happy. As a Christian this would lead me to direct people to Jesus, but even outside of this, I think society would be better if people took deliberate thought about what satisfies them and redirected their efforts towards those things.