Happiness for All

At a certain point in our lives we begin to understand that providing happiness to others will provide happiness to our selves. The more direct interpretation of this would be the act of making someone else happy will in turn elicit a happiness response in yourself (i.e. a chemical response in your brain). However, the more subtle and profound realization is that by creating more happy beings around you, these beings will return the favor, increasing your own happiness by a factor likely unachievable by yourself alone. Like an infectious disease, happiness spreads and multiplies.

Radiate happiness, create happiness for others. Do not discount the intrinsic value of creating happiness for others, but be sure to appreciate when your hard work is returned to you indirectly.

Let’s dive deeper into this idea of happiness for others. In what way can we meaningfully bring happiness into another person’s life? An obvious exercise is to ask the questions about oneself. What would bring me true happiness? The most difficult answer is the resolution of the topic under discussion. Bring happiness to others to bring happiness to yourself, well clearly we must dive deeper to make meaningful progress.

For lasting happiness, it seems that I seek guidance on how to live. Sure in the moment, a hit of some drug, good food, or even exercised induced endorphins can provide immediate happiness. Let’s separate these experiences from capital H Happiness. The happiness that lasts beyond the moment.

One simple path might lead us to seeking lowercase H happiness every day. The hedonistic treadmill model of psychology would suggest that adaptations require us to find new sources of happiness every day. This would seem to place us on a never ending cycle of desires, certainly not what the yogis of old would ever condone.

Let us try the opposite path then. Can we eliminate this desire for lowercase H happiness to find Happiness? Interesting, to work on this we might find it useful to understand why we have feelings of desire. Certainly there’s an evolutionary reason, discriminating between things we desire and don’t allows us to seek out the things in life that help us survive. Higher consciousness might suggest that we can discern these things rationally rather than using a primal sense of desire. Our desire for sugar versus our rational understanding of its need is a prime example of this. Once again, we arrive at the theme of overcoming our primal, evolutionary flaws.