The pursuit of happiness

"One should be either sad or joyful. Contentment is a warm sty for eaters and sleepers."
—Eugene O'Neill

A coworker's homepage "quote of the hit" generator served me up this gem (tongue lightly in cheek) today. There was a time when I voiced an opinion much like it. There is both truth and deception within it.

In its declarative document, our fledgling nation included "the pursuit of happiness" among the unalienable rights endowed to us by our Creator. While this raises the observation that many of us today don't believe in a creator, this post will not sojourn further along such a divisive, and likely useless, trajectory.

More helpful, for me, is a careful consideration of this contrast O'Neill draws between joyfulness and contentedness. During one particularly passionate period of my life, I too lamented the contentment for which I felt I'd settled theretofore, clinging to my newfound (and, in this case, verboten) excitement and delight. "I don't want to settle for just being content!" I bemoaned.

Let me be clear before developing my thoughts further: I do not now believe contentment should be our goal any more so than happiness, passion, excitement, or delight.

Still, the mistake that O'Neill and I, and much of our society, have shared in common has at its root the problem of forgetting the purpose of our existence. The answer to the age-old question, "Why are we here?" has become, for many of us, nothing more than to experience all of the happiness -- all of the excitement, passion, delight, and success -- that we possibly can.

Now in my forties, I'm (just barely) too young to have learned from the old Baltimore Catechism as a child, yet I've heard many of my elders in the faith repeat from deep-rooted memory: "God made me to know Him, to love Him and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven." Matthew Kelly, writing so as to appeal to a more secular audience while honoring his Catholic faith, posits that each person has an essential purpose, and for each of us it is the same: to become the best-version-of-ourselves. Interestingly, the things that make us the best-version-of-ourselves in each area of our life are also those things that maximize our true happiness. Yet paradoxically, the pursuit of happiness as a goal in and of itself usually leaves us disillusioned and disappointed. It is only by striving to become the best-version-of-myself that I experience the most happiness amid all the other emotions that this life brings.

(One important point that Kelly is always careful to tie closely together with this concept: we mustn't get the pursuit of excellence in any one area of our life out of context with the rest. We each have four distinct and important aspects of our selves: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, and the spiritual. Overemphasize or neglect any of the four, and our lives become out of balance, preventing us from becoming the overall best-version-of-ourselves and reducing our happiness.)

Back to Eugene O'Neill: I agree with him that we ought not make contentment our end. If we do, we will stagnate, no longer striving to become the best-version-of-ourselves or to know, love, and serve God in each situation. Such satisfaction leads to complacency, which keeps us from growing and loving as we ought. But if we make happiness -- unalienable right though we may have declared its pursuit -- joyfulness, or any other more intense emotion our goal in its place, we are likely to make decisions in its pursuit that make us less than the people we could be, and hurt those around us in the process. Ahh, but if we pursue the goal of becoming the best-version-of-ourselves, we will grow through the pursuit of excellence in our lives, and those feelings of joy, passion, or even "mere" contentment, will more frequently result.

As emotional beings, we will each at times feel glad, sad, angry, or afraid, and any number of combinations and degrees thereof. Often, the external circumstances that invoke the more undesirable of these emotions in our lives are beyond our control, so we cannot hope to eliminate these feelings completely. Nor should we; they serve as important indicators, stimuli, responses. However, it is also true that we unconsciously nurture these less desireable feelings by many of our decisions. We do this most frequently when we're out of balance, or when we're striving to fulfill the wrong purpose.

Happily blessed are the poor in spirit

I was discussing the beatitudes recently, and someone indicated that they weren't sure they fully understood what it meant to be poor in spirit. I can understand their confusion. Surely the Lord wasn't just talking about economic poverty, right? But maybe there needs to be room in the concept to include that category of poorness, too?

By no means is this "the" definitive answer, but for me, the idea of poverty of spirit is closely coupled with those of humility and dependence on God. I spent so much of my life trying to be self-sufficient, and I recognize now that this extended even into my attempts to be in relationship with God. In fact, I think I was among the many who view Christianity primarily as a means of becoming a good person, such that the scale of our life comes into a balance that, upon our death, merits our entry into our heavenly home. While there indeed should be evidence of transformation over the course of a Christian's walk with God, I've come to believe that this is a side effect of living the essence of Christianity, which I believe is an utter dependence on God.

I will never be able to approach God with an attitude of entitlement. At the end, I will not be sputtering "But . . . but . . . I did this and that and the other, and I never . . . ." I will not have any illusions of being worthy of the place which Jesus has prepared for me.

To me, being poor in spirit means knowing, truly knowing in the heart in a way that gets beyond the cliché that the words have become, that I cannot approach on my own the glory and righteousness of God. My only hope of salvation is that which God has provided for me through Jesus. Oh, I am not conveying this well.

Suppose an abusive father loses his family, is imprisoned for his crimes against them, and therein or thereafter comes to truly embrace the process of becoming a healthy person. He does the painful work of therapy, doing his part to repair his brokenness and that which he has caused. His family gradually comes to see and embrace the new person he has become.

Do you suppose that father ever reaches the point of believing that he is entitled to be restored to his family? Or rather, does he forever recognize his unworthiness of them, and with overflowing gratitude accept his restored place in their grace and forgiveness and love, bought at the price of their own pain and in which he has only of late participated positively?

I think this conveys my understanding of poorness of spirit. It is profoundly humble, and utterly recognizes, fully appreciates, and consistently celebrates the profound love it knows it could never deserve.

Advertising that has gotten under my skin, in one way or another:

Oh, it appears that the labels are always published in alphabetical order. I'd prefer them reversed for this post . . .

Have you noticed - and about the only way you wouldn't is if you don't watch television - the Visa Check Card commercials? Some complex, German-clockwork-like operation is humming along smoothly: hamburgers flying from grill to bun to tray to consumer (pardon me if the details aren't 100%), or happy customers and clerks juggle toys. In each scenario, consumers swiftly complete their transactions with a quick swipe at the card reader, until one thoughtless customer approaches and tries to write a check or - **GASP** - pay with CASH (IMAGINE the NERVE of some people!), to the utter inconvenience of those in a rush to complete their business and move on. Immediately the entire, formerly-efficient machine grinds to a screeching halt, and the offender either sheepishly completes his slow, outmoded transaction while everyone around him scowls, or knowingly smiles and breaks out her Visa Check Card, to everyone's approval.

I'm sorry, but I'm NEVER going to accept the premise that a credit/debit card is the only socially acceptable way to pay. Some would suggest that this is just another step toward the Revelation-predicted mark of the beast, without which individuals will not be able to participate in commerce. I'm not going there. Still, I utterly reject, and resent, the implication that using cash (which, in the U.S., still says "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private," right? I'm pretty sure the Visa Check Card doesn't say that!) or writing a check inconveniences others to such a degree that I should feel socially obligated to pay for EVERYTHING with a piece of magnetism. It is one thing to suggest a product's benefits, and quite another to imply that we all have a social obligation to use it.

And that doesn't even begin to address these commercials' underlying message about the rush in which we seem to live our lives.

Every time one of these ads appears, I grow more angry at Visa over them. They offend me to the point that I'm really glad I don't have anything in my wallet that says Visa on it!

Another one, which didn't bother me quite as much, appeared as a sidebar ad on an e-mail website. Match.com told me today: "It's okay to look!" It's the old cliché, "Just because you're on a diet doesn't mean you can't look at the menu." But isn't there a difference between noticing someone who walks by on the street and going to a website specifically to look? Isn't the latter a choice that moves me a step closer to at least considering a dalliance? Don't get me wrong: I look. I've even looked at such sites. But now that they assure me, "Oh, don't worry, it's okay . . . " I find that I must ask, "Is it, really?"

And further, I find that I know the answer.

I suspect that this actually ties into the recent conscience thread. It isn't always a matter of doing what is obviously or objectively sinful or hurtful. But rather than considering whether I can justify an action as harmless, isn't it better to ask what choice best helps me to be the husband - and in general, the person, in my current life context - I'm called to be?

Thoughts on conscience, v

Tom's observation regarding free will got me thinking a bit further:

If obedience to an all-loving, omniscient, omnipotent God is what is best for us, why on earth would we be given free will?? Perhaps it is because we learn so much about God's will through others, yet others are often wrong in one way or another, so we need an informed will and conscience to provide guidance. Still, the best reason I can think of for free will is that love is impossible without it, because love is a choice. With that capacity unavoidably comes the possibility of choosing wrongly, of choosing not-love. But I imagine God has a better and more complete reason!

I think the general point I'm trying to get to about conscience is this: instead of allowing it to call us to our best, we too often reduce it to helping us feel okay about whatever it is we've done or think we want to do. Not always, of course. Other times we see an ill, and the only answer we can see to it is what appears to be a lesser ill. But I'm primarily focusing on the former and, in my experience, predominant case. And putting this back into my Catholic (or other Christian, for that matter) perspective, when this becomes our approach to conscience, we'll almost always be in conflict with the Church, because the Church's purpose is to call us to be our best, in relationship with Christ. But if we mentally reduce the Church to an archaic, out-of-touch, man-made institution (none of which I believe it to be), then it is easier for us to reject her guidance without due consideration or attempts to understand the broader issues behind it.

But that doesn't free us to cast self-righteous judgment on those who disagree with us, which too often is just our way of salving our conscience concerning our own shortcomings through favorable comparison. I think it is easier to find the right balance if we've truly both accepted our own shortcomings (I have to be careful not to embrace this term over the more "outdated" sounding concept of "sinfulness") and embraced God's grace. Still, we have to be careful. Yes, Jesus forgave the adulterer, but without telling her that her adultery is okay! And Jesus didn't assume scripture was out of touch with his times, even though much of it had been written centuries before. When he seemed to contradict scripture, it was usually to set a higher standard, such as for the indissolubility of marriage, the adulterous nature of lustful thoughts, or to emphasize mercy over legalism. (Notice: there's a huge difference between mercy and self-righteousness. There's a vast gulf between accepting forgiveness and insisting we don't need it because what we've done isn't wrong!)

So in what do we place our faith? God has given us free will and the ability to reason; are we to value these gifts above the One who gave them? Is it that tough to know God's will, or is it only hard for us to submit to it?

Because in this day and age, it seems as if we've decided that, now that we're so advanced, now that we've so finely honed our ability to reason, we need no longer pay attention to God's opinion, as revealed to us through the scripture and the church throughout salvation history.

BTW, I'm not writing these things from some lofty perch. These are my struggles, too.

4 down, 46 to go

Yesterday I took another baby step toward my long-term goal of completing a cycling century in every state. It was a gorgeous day for the Apple Cider Century, out of Three Oaks, MI. I got started a little later than I'd have liked, due to getting into the area really late on Saturday night (well, 1:30 Sunday am). But the ride was very well-supported, with four good rest areas, each well stocked with bananas, apples, trail mix, PB&J sandwiches, soup, cookies and, of course, apple cider in addition to the standard water and Gatorade. The hot cider was especially nice before things warmed up - though with a near-record high yesterday I only partook of that at the first stop - and lunch by Lake Michigan was very cool! And they had these cute little color-coded apples with directional stems consistently painted on the pavement to indicate the 5 different mileage routes. I managed to meet a few folks, all from Chicago as it turned out, and basically had a great time!

Anyway, I'm counting this as my Michigan century even though, checking the map today, it turns out that about half of the century route was actually in Indiana. (Grrr . . . !)

But man, am I tired and sore today! I wasn't nearly as ready for this one as I've been for my previous centuries!

more on conscience still to come