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Key Elements of Happiness
By Dr. Ray Angelini
The Saratogian
January 17, 2006
At this time of year, our thoughts often turn to taking stock of our lives and contemplating what truly makes us happy and fulfilled. George Orwell said it best when he remarked, "Men can only be happy when they do not assume that the object of life is happiness."
This is indeed a paradox, but as I found in life, most great truths are. In his book, How to Want What You Have, Timothy Miller suggests that there are two key elements to happiness.
The first is to be fully present in the moment and enjoy the good things in your life. The second, which is usually more challenging for people, is to renounce your desires for all the things you want but don't have. It is very difficult to renounce wanting to win the lottery or go on vacation or buy a new car. However, this renouncement is necessary if we are to avoid getting swept away by our seemingly relentless and endless list of insatiable desires.
Why do we as humans find this renunciation so difficult? Why do we spend so much of our lives making ourselves unhappy, waging war, and destroying the planet? The answer lies in our insatiable need for more. The problem is that most of us allow ourselves to be ruled by this insatiable instinct for more. Instincts don't help us achieve happiness or avoid suffering. The main purpose of instincts is to promote survival, which is essentially irrelevant to happiness or suffering.
As Miller states, "The word enough does not appear in the instinct dictionary." This principle applies to virtually every human desire. The key to happiness is to understand and accept that our desires are insatiable. Once we truly get this, we become more able to take control of our own life.
This is not to suggest that all of our desires will ever completely disappear. Renunciation doesn't mean necessarily giving up the desire for more as much as it means giving up the idea that we are entitled to more.
This sense of entitlement for more is, I believe, the source of virtually all wars and other forms of human suffering. The relentless pursuit of more will ultimately result in catastrophe. Both as individuals and as nations, we must forsake the idea that not getting more is tantamount to failure. Getting more has become so essential in our world that we have deemed it acceptable to harm ourselves and others in order to attain it.
I believe that renunciation of the need for more involves thinking, acting, and feeling that ordinary existence is sacred. Aldous Huxley, in his classic book The Perennial Philosophy, suggests there are three essential elements to appreciating the sacred in everyday life.
First, we must believe that all people, places and things are infused with an element of the divine. Secondly, a divine reality lies at the core of every living thing. Thirdly, our single most important task as human beings is to discover and maintain our awareness of this divine reality.
It is in our ultimate appreciation of this divine reality that we are able to recognize that the desire for more is needless. All that we could ever want or desire is contained in the divine reality of what we refer to as "ordinary" existence. Our ultimate hope for happiness and peace as human beings lies in developing the awareness that the sacredness of the immediate now, whatever its nature, is the goal and fulfillment of our deepest desires.
