The pursuit of a meaningful life

Brad Pitt is an actor, hailing from Springfield, Mo. Most Americans, I suspect, recognize his name. The late Viktor Frankl was a psychiatrist; his hometown was Vienna. Frankl's name, I'll wager, is somewhat less familiar. One man enjoys a life of great financial wealth and his exploits are often in the news. The other man wore a tattoo on his arm, put there by the Nazis, and survived the German death camps -- but his pregnant wife did not. Frankl, before going into the camps, put his life and career in jeopardy by making false psychiatric diagnoses. Hitler's surrogates, as history attests, automatically shipped mentally ill patients to the gas chambers. Frankl is personally responsible for saving lives.

Very different men -- in terms of culture, education and life experience. Yet Pitt and Frankl agree about happiness. To both, it's tremendously overrated.

Our nation was founded with happiness imaged as a core value. Many of us remember the beginning of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

Frankl, who died in 1997, had a far different idea than Thomas Jefferson. To wit: "…happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue. One must have a reason to 'be happy.'" As a Holocaust survivor, Frankl watched many people die. In a 1946 book, he put his argument plainly. He argues that the difference between those who lived through Nazism's atrocities and those who died came down to one thing -- meaning.

Actor Pitt puts it somewhat less elegantly than the eminent doctor but he ends up in the same basic place philosophically: "This idea of perpetual happiness is crazy and overrated, because those dark moments fuel you for the next bright moments; each one helps you appreciate the other."

Is happiness the God-intended goal of human existence? If Jesus of Nazareth is the pre-eminent source of wisdom on this topic and all others, a glance at Luke 12 may be in order to glean an answer. In it, Jesus tells the story of a wealthy farmer whose land produced a bumper crop, leading to a decision to build bigger barns to store the largesse. With his financial worries behind him, the farmer exclaims that he will "take life easy. [He will] eat, drink, and be merry." Christ strikes down the notion that being financially well off equals happiness, calling the man a fool for taking care of his temporal life but ignoring his spirit.

If I could wish for one change in the Declaration of Independence, a magnificent document which the Founders of this republic risked their lives to sign, it would be in that one phrase in the second paragraph. We have an unalienable right to life and to liberty, yes, but rather than pursue happiness, we ought to treasure the pursuit of meaning. Happiness is overrated; meaning and purpose can never be rated too highly.

As one scientific researcher put it: "What sets human beings apart from animals is not the pursuit of happiness, which occurs all across the natural world, but the pursuit of meaning, which is unique to humans."

Brad Pitt and Viktor Frankl, two very different men, agree on this -- and so do I. Most significantly, we can infer that Jesus would consent to this thesis as well. A happy life is not nearly as important as a meaningful one.

Dr. Jeff Long teaches religious studies at Southeast Missouri State University and is executive director of the Chateau Girardeau Foundation.