The Pursuit of Happiness

July 25, 1954

Bridgeport (GL ’52)

Carl J. Westman

When the American colonists declared their right to revolt against the then existing government, they affirmed that human beings were endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

We live in a time when human lives are valued little in most parts of the earth, when liberty has become compromised and destroyed under the guise of patriotism in those areas controlled by the Soviet giant. Even more alarming, liberty is becoming a virtue that is questioned by many in our land where the right to freedom should be most proudly and most fearlessly upheld.

The third unalienable or right which John Hancock and his co-signers claimed was the pursuit of happiness. I want to talk about that. If life is cheap and liberty threatened, most assuredly we can state also that happiness is a condition which affects so many of the world’s inhabitants that it is no exaggeration to say that when you encounter a person who seems to be happy, something rare has been discovered. Robert Louis Stevenson once said that “there is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”

A manufacturer or retailer, whether he sells automobiles or laundry soap, never fails to portray the users of this product in the advertisements as happy people. The implication is that if one smokes a certain cigarette, drinks a certain brand of beer, wears a suit sold by a particular store, then he will be as happy as the model who joyfully displays the item.

Is not most everyone looking for happiness or more happiness? Does not everyone feel that he could be happier than he is now? The glittering neon, the stale air and the brassy hollow laughter of many places of “entertainment” are unmistakable signs that the pursuit of happiness is a very elusive quest.

The dictionary provides us with the definition of happiness. It is a “state of well being characterized by relative permanence, by dominantly agreeable emotion ranging in value from mere content to positive felicity and by a natural desire for its continuance.” The root of the word “happiness” indicates that are originally it was synonymous with luck, good fortune or unpredictable happening. Does one have to be lucky to be happy? Is it enough to be merely contented? Cows are supposed to be contented. But even if this doubtful condition were true, who wants to be a cow? Furthermore, if happiness is merely an unpredictable result of blind chance, how can we defend the founding fathers belief that the pursuit of happiness is an unalienable right?

Ecclesiastes, the gentle skeptic, devotes a number of chapters to this question of happiness and does not arrive at any hopeful conclusion. He discusses the number of the activities of men in an effort to discover if happiness can result.

He reasons that if work were the wish of God then surely a man’s labor should bring him happiness. But in his observation he sees many cases where work does not bring happiness. Therefore he concludes that it is vanity, that is, empty, useless.

This philosopher than argues that men have no control over the events of their lives, that everything has been for ordained by an arbitrary, uncaring power. Therefore any hope that a man can achieve happiness by his own efforts is quite useless. That too, is vanity.

He goes on describing in number of events in the human pageant which are obstacles to happiness: the difficulty of obtaining justice in the courts, the futility of trying to overcome oppression, the power of competition and jealousy to prevent happiness; the well known condition, true in his day and in ours, that riches will not buy happiness; and the difficulty of retaining wealth after one has achieved at – all these he classifies as vanity.

He comes to the mournful conclusion that man’s search for happiness is doomed to failure. Labor and toil, he concludes, are our lot, and a sorry lot at that, with no more substantial reality than shadows.

What can be said in answer to this wise skeptic, whose agnostic writings should be good evidence that the Bible is man’s word not God’s?

The second great source of unhappiness is illusion. The great illusion, or mistake, is that happiness is conceived to be something to be won, like first place in a race, or acquired an as one might acquire a Persian rug or an original by Rembrandt. Most of us will readily repeat the trite epigram, “money won’t buy happiness,” but then we feel driven to qualify the statement by adding something like this, “but it’ll buy the kind of misery that is easiest to endure,” or, quoting Sean O’Casey, “money doesn’t buy happiness, but it quiets the nerves.” Such significant remarks demonstrate that we have a haunting, vague feeling that there is something vitally amiss with the attitudes we find so common, whether expressed or unexpressed, “what do I get out of it?” “what’s in it for me?” Some time ago a well known weekly magazine described how the wives of young executives in the business and professional world must observe certain unwritten laws of behavior if the husband is to advance in his chosen job. The choice of Home, automobile, even one’s closest friends, is dictated by the demands of the particular business for which the husband works. The article, even if true only in small measure, is a savage indictment of what our modern civilization may do to the worthwhile things of humanity. To some, as to the particular group in the magazine on article, success is the key to happiness.

Success, like acquiring Persian rugs, or original paintings never seems to reach a sufficiency. Like eating peanuts, the more you consume, the more you seem to want, even though additional quantities are wholly unnecessary.

In our day, we’re very much a under the influence of what is sometimes called “gracious living.” Comfort, ease and luxury are the keynotes. There’s nothing wrong with being comfortable – unless we make the mistake of thinking that comfort is synonymous with real happiness. Dr. Ralph Sockman, whom many of you have heard, once reminded his congregation that the function of the church and its ministry was to “comfort the afflicted” and “afflict the comfortable.”

If it is part of the task of organized religion to transfer some of the burdens to the shoulders of those who are at ease in Zion, then we can rule out physical comfort as the equivalent of happiness.

Is then, poverty, sackcloth and ashes the answer? In the old storybooks there appeared the story of the king who was desperately unhappy man. He sent for his philosophers, wise men, and counselors and told them that he wanted to be happy and relied upon them to tell him how we might achieve that goal. All offered solutions which failed. Then one sage told the king that happiness could be his if he would wear the shirt of a happy man.

All the king’s soldiers and messengers were sent throughout the kingdom to find a happy man. Nowhere did they find one. All men were unhappy. Finally one was discovered – a tramp taking his ease in the shade of a tree. The king’s messenger then demanded that the tramp give his shirt to the king so that the king might be a happy man. The tramp laughed, opened his coat and showed the messenger that he had no shirt.

Perhaps because of the influence of that story, for a long time I was under the illusion that the knights of the dusty roads, the romantic characters who traveled in boxcars and cooked delicious Mulligan stew in tin cans were carefree in happy, glorying in the beauties of nature and the joys of irresponsible comradeship. Like the other youthful ideas, the glamour rubbed off of the “picturesque” hoboes when I discovered that these wanderers are among the most tragically unhappy people in our whole civilization. The reason they travel the roads is because they find a living in one place impossible for them to cope with. The incidence of crime, insanity, suicide is far greater among these so called “romantic” wanderers that among other people. To yield to unrestricted wanderlust is seldom a triumph for happiness. Most often it is an admission of misery.

If happiness is not necessarily tied in with acquiring comfort, goods, power or success; and if on the other hand happiness has no relationship to poverty and irresponsibility, then what is it? Is happiness even more of an illusion than these other experiences of life?

Happiness, it seems to me, is not one of the quantities of life. It is not a thing like an upholstered chair or a rare stamp. Rather, happiness is a quality of life. Most certainly it is not a quality of life confined to a particular social structure, whether high or low. Happiness is not the possession of any particular country or particular time. Happiness cannot be packaged – but it can be demonstrated.

Happiness can be demonstrated by an attitude toward the universe. The fears that corrode happiness can be overcome by a confidence in the WORTH of this vast and mysterious condition in which we find ourselves. The fear of death that gnaws at life’s joys need not be a burden if we accept the reality of death. If we realize, without apprehension, that the end of our bodily existence is as natural a fact as the creation of life within the mother’s body, we need not fear. We fear not the rays of tomorrow’s sun although their power will surely appear to us. The next hour may bring disaster and pain – but need we fear it now? We are limited in many ways – inability to overcome the death of the body whether through age, illness, or chance – that is one of the limitations we must recognize and accept.

In the 144th Psalm the Hebrew singer says as his closing line, “happy is the people whose God is the Lord,” In addition to the feeling of at-homeness in our universe, we need another ingredient to this mixture of life’s elements which will give us a chance for real happiness.

Happiness can be demonstrated by refusing to accept the illusion that happiness is something that can be found by searching for it, as though it were an acorn and we were squirrels. (Gumpert) in his book likens the search for happiness to an incident in World War II. During the war years there arose a report that the German Luftwaffe was treating the crews of that air force with injections of adrenal hormones which enabled them to fly without any physical interference at 40,000 feet.” The rumor was false, but when it reached Washington in 1941, the Army and Navy called on the accelerated research program for the investigation and production of adrenal cortical hormones. The end result of this stimulated interest, though not useful for the war effort, was the discovery of the powerful substance for the treatment of arthritis,” which promises so much relief for a most crippling illness. Happiness too, comes unsought. Happiness comes only when we are able to look for something else.

There used to be a song, “wishing will make it so.” But it won’t. Happiness comes only from a worthwhile loyalty to important things. If everyone tried to live the motto of the Boy Scouts, to do a good turn to someone every day, then happiness would result. The secret, if it is a secret, of happiness is what you give – not what you get. I hope I haven’t told you the story (at least not recently) about the preacher who agreed to fill a supply [sic] preaching assignment in a small church in an isolated area. The preacher took his young son with him for company. As he entered the little country church, he saw a collection box placed on a stand near the entrance to the church auditorium. Thinking it a collection box for world service or relief, the preacher, hoping to set a good example for his son, who was watching him intently, placed a fifty cent piece into the slot of the collection box and went on into the church. He conducted the service and after the concluding hymn greeted the small congregation that had come to the service. As he was leaving, one of the deacons came up to him and said, “we believe in a voluntary offering to pay for the preacher in this church,” Turning to the collection box, the deacon unlocked it, removed the cover and shook the contents into the preacher’s hand. One fifty cent piece rolled out. The preacher thanked the deacon politely, although a bit ironically. The preacher and his son went to the car and started the trip home. The boy said nothing for a time and then remarked, “you know day, if you had put more in you’d have gotten more out.” So with the quality of happiness.

I think probably the most important thing that Jesus ever said was that group of suggestions for noble living that we call the beatitudes. It may be that they represent a more detailed exposition of that most vital sentence of the master, “he who loses his life shall find it.”

The beatitudes, each of with begins with the word that is translated “blessed”, are a little clearer when we realize that in place of the word “blessed” we can substitute “happy” without any inaccuracy of translation. When we do we are confronted with the true insight that the pursuit of happiness cannot be the pursuit of happiness, but the pursuit of noble ideals and high conduct. The happiness must come unsought.

”Happy are those who feel their spiritual need.” Life is lived on more than one level. If we confine our efforts, our ideas, to the material, the appetites of the body, we might occasionally be satiated, but we won’t be happy. But when we feel the need to achieve spiritual and moral goals and purposes; when we live on higher levels by seeking to translate those moral goals into conduct, then says Jesus, “happy are we.”

“Happy are the mourners.” Was Jesus joking in poor taste? Can mourners be happy? I think he was saying with condensed wisdom that the fact of our mourning, if it is a sincere mourning and not the expression of guilt or hidden satisfaction, is proof that something very precious has been present. A relationship has been achieved which had introduced into life a quality of happiness that arose above the fundamental needs to breathe, eat, and sleep.

“Happy are the humble-minded, for they will possess the land.” If you are satisfied with today’s work well done, even though tomorrow you may want to achieve better, then you will not vainly pursue the foolish goals of more and more goods and more and more power, merely to attempt to satisfy a lust for wealth and power.

And so Jesus enumerated these qualities that make for happy of “blessed” living: those who are determined that justice and righteousness will prevail; the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers; the honest martyrs – all these says Jesus, are happy.

Jesus was not deceived by that seductive illusion that happiness is tied up with anything but achieving the qualities of life. And happiness can never be found if only itself is the object of the search.

Happiness is a by-product of high religion. Because if, as the psalmist told us, “happy is the people whose God is the Lord,” and if we affirm, our Universalism is concerned with moral insights and affirmations of the ethical qualities that are possible in the scheme of living, then perhaps we may devote ourselves to life and liberty. The pursuit of happiness can be forgotten, because if it comes not as a result of our dedication to the good life, and real liberty, then it can come not at all.

Amen.