In Pursuit of Happiness

I have often wondered, why do we do what we do in life? Why do we get up and go to work everyday, why do we compete with our friends and colleagues and try to be better than them, why do we must have a better job than our relatives, why must we have a better partner than our neighbours. Is it because all of them will make us look more successful or is it really because they will make us happy?

What is the yardstick to measure success of a man's life? I think, it is how happy and contend he is with his life. Happiness is the purpose of a man's life. Irrespective of who we are and what we have have achieved, we are always striving for something better in life. This pursuit of better life is the pursuit of happiness, the purpose of a man's life.

What are the key ingredients of happiness? Is it a fat pay cheque, a big car, a big bungalow, a beautiful wife, a powerful position? If that was the case, the Forbes list of the richest and the most powerful people in the world will also be the list of the happiest people in the world. Happiness is a difficult thing to attain because we perhaps do not have an idea what happiness is.

Can money buy anyone happiness? If it can't, why do people behave as if it can? The Beatles sang that money can't buy you love. They could have sung that money can't buy you happiness and would have been as right as they were. There is a big volume of research which conclude that although rich people are more satisfied, however money can increase with happiness to a very limited extend. Fedrick Herzberg in his Two Factor Theory also advocated that salary was a hygiene factor. It does not give positive satisfaction though its absence can cause dissatisfaction. Happiness may be difficult to achieve but the obstacle to it is not primarily monetary. Money is a consequence of greater objectives of our life. Bill Gates didn't aim for billion of dollars, his dream was to put a computer on every desk in every home. Sachin Tendulkar never aimed for million of dollars, he only followed his passion.

When I was a kid, a gentleman who knew I liked sweets asked me "How would I feel, if I got 1 sweet? ". I said "I will be happy.". He asked me " Will I be happier if I got 5 sweets." I said "Of course, yes." He raised the number to 100 and asked the same question. This time I wasn't sure of my answer.  The gentleman was perhaps asking a different question, "Can more and more of materialistic things bring happiness?". Buddhism describes it as ordinary happiness where the happiness after a point changes into unhappiness and suffering.

Many religious thinkers, philosophers and psychologists since time immemorial have pondered over the subject of happiness. Students of Socrates had contradictory ideas about it. Aristippus subscribed to the hedonistic lifestyle and preached that goal of life is to seek external pleasure. According to Plato the human soul consists of three parts: The reason, the will and the desire. Happiness of man depended on balancing these three parts of the human soul.

Ever smiling Gautam Buddha preaches that path of happiness starts from understanding root causes of our suffering. Control of the mind is the stepping stone in the journey of happiness. It is about detaching oneself from passions, pleasures, needs and wants of life. He advises that peace of mind will lead to nirvana or the ultimate truth. The eight fold path can help one achieve nirvana. Biochemist turned Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard says we can train our minds in habits of well-being, to generate a true sense of serenity and fulfillment.

TED Talks Matthieu Ricard: The habits of happiness

American psychologist, Abraham Maslow in his theory of hierarchy of needs has described self actualisation as the highest level of need. He argues that need for self actualisation is deeply ingrained in human mind. It comes to surface when lower levels of needs are satisfied. Maslow defines self-actualization to be "the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for him [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.". In brief, self actualization is full realization of ones true potential. The concept is not very different from the idea of nirvana which has found mention in both Buddhism and Hinduism.

Religion has always been associated with happiness. Religion was described as "opiate of the masses" by Karl Marx suggesting that it creates a feeling of goodness and helps the masses to overlook and cope with injustices done to them. So does religion only creates hallucination of happiness or is there an significant relationship between religiousness and happiness? The simplest explanation - if religion makes people happy, the most religious countries will also be the happiest countries in the world. However, the evidence points to the contrary. According to Gallup's global well-being surveys in 2010, Denmark, Sweden and Netherlands were amongst happiest nations in the world.  Coincidentally, according to another Gallup survey, they were among the least religious countries in the world.

Let us look at another piece of research. Ed Diener, Louis Tay , and David G. Myers in a study have found out that difficult life circumstances tend to make people more religious. Their study concluded that countries where economic situation was bad, like sub Saharan African countries, middle east were likely to be more religious. The most developed countries, like Scandinavian countries were likely to be least religious. In countries where economic or social conditions were not good but religiosity high, high religiousness was associated with high happiness indicating that religion may neutralize the negative effects of poverty, suffering and hardship. Religion perhaps then is a means to deal with uncertainties and difficulties of life, and which helps us find a meaning in our life. The relationship between religion and happiness is not as simple as it seems.

The pursuit of happiness is not the pursuit of material things. It is not even detachment and sacrifice of worldly possessions. It is what Cyprian Norwid wrote: "To be what is called happy, one should have something to live on, something to live for, something to die for. The lack of one of these results in drama. The lack of two results in tragedy.".