I find that trying to make yourself happy is often far more difficult and less effective than trying to make someone else happy. Somehow, when you focus on yourself, it just doesn’t have the same effect. It’s very hard to do things for yourself and have them be very meaningful. For one thing, there is no surprise involved, no sudden and unexpected delight. There’s no social aspect, no relational dimension. And it involves no discipline, often. You’re doing what you want for you, which requires very little of you. And all of these things make it harder to get much out of it.
The main advantage of trying to make yourself happy is that you know what you like. But it’s not the same. Have you ever tried tickling yourself? What about scratching your own head or rubbing your own shoulders? It relieves the immediate need, perhaps, the deficit, but adds little special credit. Now try having someone else do those things for you. Big difference. One might as well ask, what is the difference between masturbation and having someone else giving you the same pleasure. You’ll forget one very quickly, but the other might actually have some durable meaning for you and your life. Maybe we aren’t made to be that happy alone.
I find that the easiest way to make other people happy, since I’m not really minded toward others, is to apply my wits to the problem. Figure out, like a puzzle, what that person likes to have happen, what in their environment would please them and make their day better. It’s a challenge to be overcome. That gives me some interest. Next, just do the task without thinking about whether I actually want to do it. Because I don’t. I don’t really care. But it’s a job, and endeavor. I can get interested in doing a task and doing it well, I can get distracted by it enough to not think about why I’m doing it or whether I really care about it or am properly motivated. Then, when it’s done, just move on. Let it just be something I did, that I accomplished. Good job. If it at least gets noticed, that’s usually enough recognition, and I may point it out if it would otherwise be invisible, but usually that’s not needed. So, there. Task-oriented kindness for people who aren’t that kind or caring or selfless.
Doing it at least helps you hit a certain deliberate minimum. And then at least you won’t be able to reproach yourself when you look back and say, did I ever do anything for this person, actually for them, did I ever demonstrate to them that I cared and was trying to make them happy? You can’t actually know or control whether it will make them happy, and you can’t know if you will ever see the benefits yourself. But it’s my experience that such things tend to work like small acts of gardening. We can’t make the trees grow or bear fruit. But we can water them, amend the soil, remove the weeds. And that’s all it is our job to do, all that’s in our power. But we may look over one day and see shade and fruit and know that we had a hand in helping make it possible.
The strange thing is, that when you’re working on making someone else happy, the work itself is meaningful. Somehow doing it, even if I’m not great at it or invested in it, makes me more content, even more content that trying to make myself happy. And so the question, “Am I happy?” just seems to matter less. That’s a personal existential question, and I’m not sure we even always know what we mean by it. Life and work are more meaningful when you’re trying to make others happy. And that is often enough, that seems to be a more durable substitute for happiness, which is such a fleeting emotional state. Happiness is a moment. Meaning is a structure you can live inside.
“How can you actually be happy?” is a much harder question than most people credit it. It takes up much of the space in the book of Ecclesiastes. There you have someone who went all in on trying to make himself happy by every means possible. And he has the means. But he never finds an answer to his question, exactly. But he does conclude this. “Moreover, when God gives someone wealth and possessions, and the ability to enjoy them, to accept their lot and be happy in their toil—this is a gift of God. They seldom reflect on the days of their life, because God keeps them occupied with gladness of heart.”
I think that’s what I’ve found. The question,” Am I happy?” is always going to be a problem. Because it’s always just a moment. And being happy is hard to do when you’re looking at it in the moment. And there is always enough grief in the world to pull that moment down. And simply asking the question can be enough to stall the process. Being happy is something that moves through time, a way of being. The moment you stop to question and evaluate, in that moment you’re no longer participating in the process that produces happiness. And it’s always easier to be discontent than content. Because, after all, you can’t really be that much more happy, but you could be a lot more dead or in danger. So it makes sense to build the human psyche with a negative prejudice toward recognizing problems over being blissfully ignorant.
Happiness, the teacher in Ecclesiastes seems to argue, is found in meaning. In doing and accepting your work and enjoying its results, so that your life is filled up with meaning, and you seldom need to linger to ask such questions. You’re living inside the process, not scrutinizing the individual existential moments. Maybe that isn’t exactly happiness. Maybe it’s just the cure for the question of happiness.
Mr Nobody's Patented Blog 