The Pursuit of Happiness

It's been a while since I've posted, and much of the reason is that life is SO FUN right now.  You might laugh at that statement, but I've been spending many nights with friends, other nights reclined on the couch, and weekends trotting around with friends and family.  The last month has included celebrating our nation's independence, family birthdays, engagements and upcoming nuptials, CT Scans with no cancer in them, successfully teaching my dog to run with me, and the intoxicating combination of warm sun and fresh water.  In many ways, the last year as a whole has been marked by ease, fun and happiness.

Sound good?  Agreed.  But a quiet, yet constant sense of dissatisfaction persists.  Were we meant to live happily?  Thomas Jefferson, for one, thought we were at least meant to pursue it.  But, is that the ultimate means and end God has in mind for us?

The nagging discontent tells me no.  I've been timidly asking God for challenge recently- something more than the status quo I see around me.  I don't expect that challenge must set up shop in lieu of happiness.  They are not mutually exclusive.  I simply ask that challenge would come my way, and that God would provide me the courage to pursue the fertile soil for growth rather than cast it aside because I'm too busy pursuing happiness.  I want to be stretched, grown and broken.  Happiness usually doesn't offer that effect.  

And of course, I also enjoy happiness.  It's easy.  It's fun.  It requires little and appears to offer much.  But it doesn't usually produce growth and sanctification the way adversity does.

I suspect that the elusive nature of the pursuit of happiness is something everyone sees, but most ignore.  Observation reveals that some folks acknowledge it, yet fewer still consciously refuse to search the well of happiness for their satisfaction.  It's not a secret then that God didn't design us with the ultimate goal of happiness.  The Bible certainly doesn't articulate so and general revelation (what humans can learn about God from the general world) doesn't buy it either, as evidenced by Toni Morrison's recent speech to Rutgers University graduates:

"I have often wished that Jefferson had not used that phrase, 'the pursuit of happiness,' as the third right - although I understand in the first draft it was 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.'  Of course, I would have been one of those properties one had a right to pursue, so I suppose happiness is an ethical improvement over a life devoted to the acquisition of land, acquisition of resources, acquisition of slaves.  Still, I would rather he had written life, liberty, and the pursuit of meaningfulness or integrity or truth.

I know that happiness has been the real, if covert, goal of your labors here.  I know that it informs your choice of companions, the profession you will enter, but I urge you, please don't settle for happiness.  It's not good enough.  Of course, you deserve it.  But if that is all you have in mind - happiness - I want to suggest to you that personal success devoid of meaningfulness, free of a steady commitment to social justice, that's more than a barren life, it is a trivial one.  It's looking good instead of doing good."

Thank you Toni, for educating at least one class of graduates with this universal truth: don't settle for happiness.

Thank you, God, for redeeming our trivial life and giving us joy and fulfillment in place of bareness.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.  I Corinthians 6:19-20