© 2009 Max Masotti
© 2009 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
According to the dictionary, happiness is a state of perfect inner satisfaction. Defining happiness is not easy. Is it about “small, everyday joys” or a sustainable state of mind?
And I believe that true happiness is found in the way we live. I believe that true happiness is based on our self-love, on the love of the people we truly love. I believe that true happiness is based on the way we see life, on the way we are able to approach a problem knowing that it is not only bad but that there is something to be learned from it. It is part of our experience. I also believe that happiness is based on belief, on what we believe, on the purpose we give to life, to our life, on our ability to seek God, on our faith.
Socrates said: “We can only live better by seeking to become better, nor more pleasantly than by being fully aware of our improvement.” “My soul! When will you be good and simple, without mixture and without make-up? When will you be fully satisfied with your state? When will you find your pleasure in all the things that happen to you? When will you be convinced that you have everything within you?”
Happiness is a state of complete satisfaction and plenitude, it is the passage from a lesser perfection to a higher perfection, a state where the power of my body to act is increased and happiness becomes static just like beatitude or adoration which are bliss and supreme happiness.
Happiness is an agreement: this full rest that is happiness presupposes an agreement and a harmony: a unity between the values of man and the order of the world and divine laws. For there to be happiness, is it not necessary, in fact, that there be an encounter between the choices and values of the human being, on the one hand, and the universal order, on the other hand, and this harmony transcends and encompasses him entirely. The wise man who contemplates the Eternal in a life of leisure truly embodies the happy man.
What is proper to man is therefore the life of the spirit, since the spirit essentially constitutes man. Such a life is also perfectly happy. The wise Epicurean defines happiness as balance of the soul and calm of the mind.
Aristotle spoke out in favor of the search for a supreme good leading to virtue: “Happiness is the supreme good.” It consists, for each human being, in fulfilling the natural function which is proper to him. According to him, the function proper to man, the end which will bring him happiness is reason, the activity of the intellect. This accomplishment is accompanied by pleasure, because pleasure is born from the perfection of the activity.
Happiness is therefore a lasting state of fullness and satisfaction, a pleasant and balanced state of mind and body, from which suffering, worry and disorder are absent. Aristotle clearly sees happiness in the end of life. In the Nicomachean Ethics, he asks the question: “What is the sovereign good of our activity? It is happiness.”
Seneca said: “Few men know how to achieve happiness; men especially know how to make their own unhappiness.” In decadent Rome, happiness is measured by the quantity of objects consumed.
For Petronius, in his novel Satyricon, it is the characteristic of the freed slave to display his wealth as a clearly visible sign of his happiness.
For Pascal, happiness is a stable, lasting state. However, Pascal observes that men are incapable of remaining at rest. So, is happiness an inaccessible ideal? Are there criteria for happiness?
Franz Kafka said: “Theoretically, there is only one perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible in oneself without aspiring to it.”
What does happiness consist of? Above all, remaining free and master of one’s opinions, one’s thoughts; whatever the circumstances. Isn’t the essential thing to preserve one’s freedom, on the throne as in chains? The wise man finds ataraxia, peace of soul, indifference of mind in all situations.
Epictetus said: “You hope that you will be happy as soon as you have obtained what you desire. You are wrong. You will no sooner be in possession than you will have the same worries, the same sorrows, the same disgusts, the same fears, the same desires. Happiness does not consist in acquiring and enjoying, but in not desiring. For it consists in being free.” The wise self-master accepts the divine order, the divine spark present in all that exists.
Ataraxia is the state of mind that has become foreign to the disorders of passion and insensitive to pain.
Eudaemonism, from the Greek eudaimon = happy, system of morality having as its goal the happiness of man; term which is found in the philosophers of antiquity who very early considered that happiness is the ultimate end of philosophy; the search for truth and wisdom is above all a means to approach happiness. It designates the set of doctrines which, refusing to separate happiness and virtue, make happiness the Sovereign Good and its search the end of moral action.
Happiness, the happy place, the space where consciousness is happy. It is a state of consciousness. What is designated by the word happiness is in reality a state of being, a peaceful state of balance, a state of fact of contentment, of appeased fullness of a self-consciousness which, ceasing to be pulled outwards, is gathered within itself. Why do we believe that happiness falls from the sky like a gratification? Because it can in reality spring from the heart at any moment.
Happiness is the joy of existing fully and completely, the joy of being here and now without distance or evasion. It seems that the happiest man in the world is the Buddhist monk Mathieu Ricard, right-hand man of the Dalai Lama. I have only read his book “Plea for Happiness”, but I envy his bliss, his true spiritual plenitude.
Happiness is not a destination, it is a trajectory. It takes so little to be happy. You just have to appreciate each little moment and sanctify it as one of the best moments of your life. If happiness is the agreement between our desires and the order of the world, then it is better to modify our desires. (Descartes)
See UB 103:5.5 — UB 111:4.7 — UB 131:3.7 — UB 136:6.10 — UB 140:4.10 — UB 140:5.6 — UB 159:3.10 — UB 159:3.12 — UB 171:7.9
Max Masotti