Happiness is gift

Happiness can be exhausting.

Chasing after it, securing it, maintaining it -- even sometimes feeling it -- can wear me out.

Our culture idolizes happiness and views it as the default state we should be existing in; it tells us if we aren't happy, something is wrong. Our culture tells us everything about our existence should make us happy: our job, our relationships, the place we live. It teaches us to chase the high of feeling good and to devalue things that might be hard or sad or unglamorous.

While happiness can be a good thing, the danger in thinking it is our goal or even our normal can cause us to think when something isn't bringing us happiness, it's wrong and we need to change it. I think this can make us striving people -- which is also exhausting, in my opinion -- and people who do not endure, but who are constantly tossed about from one new thing to another, searching for something lasting.

French priest Father Jacques Philippe writes about living in the present moment and finding value in each task before us, regardless of whether it brings us happiness. He writes, "Sometimes, though, it isn't worry that causes us to focus on the future, but the hope of something better or happier. ... The time when things will go better, circumstances will change, life will be more interesting. At present, we tell ourselves, we don't really have a life, but later we will 'live life to the full.' ... We may spend our whole lives waiting to live. Thus we risk not fully accepting the reality of our present lives. Yet, what guarantee is there that we won't be disappointed when the long-awaited time arrives? Meanwhile we don't put our hearts sufficiently into today, and so miss graces we should be receiving. ...

"To live today well we also should remember that God only asks for one thing at a time, never two. ... Even when what we're doing is genuinely trifling, it's a mistake to rush through it as though we felt we were wasting our time. If something, no matter how ordinary, needs to be done and is part of our lives, it's worth doing for its own sake, and worth putting our hearts into."

I love these ideas because they ask us to accept and live out reality rather than the unrealities the world tries to sell us. These words ask us to look for the gift in what we have and in what we are already called to.

Because of course, it is nice to feel happy but for it to be the kind of happiness that is renewing rather than draining, there has to be a solid foundation beneath it, the knowledge the presence of happiness is not where I find my meaning, but rather the presence of God is.

Happiness is an emotional state, which means it's impermanent. Sometimes life is sad, and that's OK; it won't last forever. Sometimes life is happy, and that's OK; it won't last forever. We can hold it all with open hands; when happiness comes, we accept it as gift and enjoy it. When it leaves, we accept that as gift, too, and know no matter what, our God is with us and loves us.