As human beings we seem to be made to want happiness. Joseph Smith taught that ‘happiness is the object and design of our existence’ so it must be divinely intended as a pursuit of our lives. Mostly, however, we tend to seek for it badly, or at least in ways that fail to satisfy our longing. Power, wealth, position, ease and comfort have come to be equated with happiness in our society, but real happiness does not go up in proportion to those things.
Elder Holland taught: ‘Happiness is not easy to find running straight for it. It is usually too elusive, too ephemeral, too subtle. If you haven’t learned it already, you will learn in the years ahead that most times happiness comes to us when we least expect it, when we are busy doing something else. Happiness is almost always a by-product of some other endeavor.’ (‘Happiness is a Quest,’ campus devotional, BYU-Idaho, Sept. 2014) In pursuing happiness by doing pleasurable things or by seeking the worldly measures of power, wealth or comfort as a path to happiness, we often miss it. It seems counterintuitive, but happiness is found mostly when we are living in a manner that produces it-not when we are self-centeredly looking for it.
Joseph Smith qualified his statement on happiness by pointing out that happiness ‘will be the end thereof [speaking about our existence], if we pursue the path that leads to it…’ ((Joseph Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. by Joseph Fielding Smith, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1938, pp. 255–56.) This depicts more of a journey than an arrival point. The happiness path sounds like a road I would like to take myself, and the path I would encourage everyone I love to travel.
I certainly do not have all the answers to walking that path, but I do have some idea of living ‘after the manner of happiness’. (2 Nephi 5:27)
As in everything, Jesus Christ is the way.
Seek to know Him and His Father. In knowing them, we know love, we know who we really are, and we know breathtaking potential.
Let Jesus do His work in our lives-live in His grace through repentance and deliverance, healing and enabling power; through change and progress and hope.
Serve and love others. Perhaps nothing brings happiness so much as giving of ourselves to foster happiness in others.
Make and keep covenants and commandments. The covenant path is also the happiness path. Peace, confidence in God’s presence, power and eternal vision dwell there.
Actively choose to see the goodness around us and cultivate gratitude. Ultimately, much of happiness is a choice, not a passive feeling we wait to have presented to us. An intentional vision of good is one way we choose to live happily.
Work in a meaningful way. There are many ways to do this (not just for money) and all of them provide us with purpose, which contributes to our feelings of well-being.
Because it is a path, a journey, we can expect to need to continue on the exploration for a lifetime. We can know real happiness even when emotions don’t always cooperate with what we know or when circumstances are decidedly unhappy. Sustained, lasting happiness may be difficult to maintain in our fallen world, but we can rest in the knowledge that we were designed for that very thing.
Maybe the only ‘secret’ to happiness is simply to look for it where it actually can be found.
