What It Takes To Be Happy
“For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the byproduct of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself.”
These words, penned by Holocaust survivor and psychotherapist Viktor Frankl in his famous Man’s Search for Meaning, strike at the complex origins of the object of so much of human longing: happiness. Upon reflecting on this elusive quality, many of us recall the idyllic simplicity of childhood when, embalmed in the present and wrapped up in innocence, we found it easy to be happy.
I think a caveat rears its head here, however. Adult happiness does not quite follow the same recipe. This is largely because as we grow older, we wise up and our eyes are opened. Naïveté is (hopefully) peeled back, the husk of innocence falling away. And so, happiness becomes less a matter of willing ourselves to access that same, carefree, fun-loving child again (a pursuit that is necessarily in vain despite our stubborn attempts to return, return, return).
Instead, happiness evolves to contain the imperative of acceptance. This is the antidote to that stripped…
