The search for happiness is a life-controlling pursuit. We might
seek it in many ways, but we all seek it. However, happiness is an elusive
butterfly, seemingly within reach but almost impossible to grasp.
Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, has observed:
·
“You dream of getting a promotion, being
accepted into a prestigious school, or finishing a big project. You work every waking hour, perhaps imagining
how happy you will be if you could just achieve that goal. Then you succeed, and if you’re lucky you get
an hour, maybe a day, of euphoria.”
Many are convinced that wealth buys happiness. However,
after exploring the data, Haidt concluded:
·
“Wealth itself has only a small direct effect on
happiness because it so effectively speeds up the hedonic treadmill… As the
level of wealth has doubled or tripled in the last fifty years in many
industrialized nations, the levels of happiness and satisfaction with life that
people report have not changed, and depression has actually become more
common.”
We tend to dream about what we do not have. While the
wealthy might continue to obsessively pursue wealth as the addict pursues his drug,
they have little hope that it can buy the happiness they seek.
And it’s not just wealth that disappoints. Harvard
psychologist Dan Gilbert cites other failed dreams:
·
“From field studies to laboratory studies, we
see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner,
getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, on
and on, have far less impact, less intensity and much less duration than people
expect them to have.”
Instead, unlike in animal world, the human dream for
temporal satisfaction often morphs into a dream of the eternal, if it remains
alive. Haidt wrote,
·
“Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil
to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger.”
Why should we despair of having our dreams fulfilled in the
temporal? There are many indications that we were made for relationship and not
for self-fulfillment. Philosopher Alain de Botton identifies an overlooked but important
distinction:
·
“[Modern society has] nothing at its center that
is non-human. We are the first society to be living in a world where we don’t
worship anything other than ourselves.”
Although it is natural to want to be fulfilled, perhaps we
have been focusing on the wrong thing. MIT Professor Ian Hutchinson became a
Christian at Cambridge University. He found that the most fundamental aspect of
reality is the ultimate “loving relationship”:
·
“The fundamental assumption in the intellectual
West today is that there is no reality beyond what natural science discovers
and that there is no authority or good higher than the freedom of the
individual. Both science and individual freedom are good. But followers of
Jesus, like me, have a different view. We believe that both the deepest reality
and the highest moral meaning, good, and authority are to be found in loving
relationship.” (All of the above quotations: http://www.veritas.org/modern-psychology-biblical-wisdom/
)
Meanwhile, some claim that this relationship is delusional,
perhaps an irrational by-product of evolution. But consider this – if evolution
has equipped us with senses and intuitions fine-tuned for our survival and successful
navigation of this world – and the irrational works against a successful
adaptation – perhaps a belief in the Transcendent is not irrational. Perhaps it
is as instructive of reality as is our moral, aesthetic, and taste-bud intuitions.
A belief in the God of the Bible is associated with many
benefits – survival advantages. The deceased psychiatrist, M. Scott Peck, had
written the highly popular book, “The Road Less Traveled.” It had been
successful because he was able to infuse barren psychology and clinical
practice with a more robust and richer portrait of ourselves through his
Buddhism. However, over the years, he began to observe improvement of a certain
group of his patients, those who believed that their Savior would bring them
through. Peck concluded:
·
Now what better news can there be than we cannot
lose, we are bound to win? We are guaranteed winners once we realize that
everything that happens to us has been designed to teach us what we need to
know on our journey. (“Further Along the Road Less Traveled” was written 15
years later.)
He became so convinced about the need for this conviction
that he too became a Christian.
This doesn’t mean that our dream has been fulfilled in this
life. However, as radar can detect the approach of an airplane, we too can
detect the fruition of our not-too-distant dream.
