The Whole World Yearns for Happiness

Dennis Edwards

But where do we find such a thing as happiness? How do we know when we have found it? Can we know that we are happy? Is happiness in knowing? The Greeks say, “Know thyself!” Their adage of wisdom was in the knowing. But Jesus teaches otherwise. He says, “If you know these things happy are you if you do them.”[1]

But what things was Jesus talking about? Knowing yourself? Looking within for the knowledge of God within you? No, that was not the drift of His thoughts nor His words. It was at the Last Supper and Jesus had just finished washing His disciple’s feet. He then asked them, “Do you understand what I have done for you?”[2] He goes on to explain that if He, their Master, has washed their feet, how much more should they wash one another’s feet. He was demonstrating to them and explaining the importance of serving one another. He said, “If I your Lord and Master have washed your feet, how much more should you wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done.” The washing of the feet was something a servant would do. But here Jesus was serving them. He then spoke those famous words, “If you know these things, Happy are you if you do them.”

Jesus is saying, contrary to Greek thought and contrary to the Roman practise of over indulging the flesh, that happiness comes from service to others. Mother Teresa said it in the following manner: “The fruit of quietness is prayer. The fruit of prayer is faith. The fruit of faith is love. The fruit of love is service. The fruit of service is peace.” In other words, “The fruit of service is happiness.” Happiness is not in the “knowing” as the Greeks taught. Happiness is in the doing. Happiness is in serving others.

We are all inclined to self-deception. Apostle James warns us to not deceive ourselves in thinking we are doing when we are only hearing God’s Word.[3] Faith comes from hearing God’s Word and we find great joy in its truth. But God’s Word is not only to be heard, but to be put into practise. “Happy are you if you do them.” Jesus said we are wise if we hear God’s Word and do what it says.[4]

The Greeks taught that to “Know thyself” brought one to happiness of mind and heart. In Solomon’s  Ecclesiastes we read, “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increases knowledge increases sorrow.” [5] That’s why when we go to Africa and live and work with the poor, we find in them happiness. In their simplicity and lack of knowledge they can be content. But we in our excess of knowledge are miserable.

Solomon goes on to write, “Sorrow is better than laughter (or false happiness): for by the sadness of the contenance the heart is made better.”[6] In other words, there is a false happiness or laughter that is not really happiness and peace. But it is through the sorrows of life that our hearts are broken and made better, that our shallowness and foolishness and selfishness is brought to the brim and extracted.

Solomon goes on to say that God’s presence is more with those in the house of mourning, than with those in the house of mirth.[7] Jesus goes on to tell us that God’s presence will be with those that truly love Him and keep His words. He said, “If a man love Me, he will keep My words; and My Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.”[8] In the Psalms we read, “Happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”[9] But in the verse preceding it  we see, “that there be no complaining in our streets.”[10]

In other words, if we want inner happiness or peace in our hearts, we may very well need to go through sorrow and grief to find it. If we want God’s presence in our lives and the happiness He gives, we need to love and obey His words. If we have God as the Lord we will be happy, if we have no complaining in our streets.

I am reminded of Paul’s admonition: “Do not be anxious (or worried)  about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God. And the peace (or happiness) of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”[11] We see that if our hearts are thankful, God’s spirit will guard our heart and mind in happiness.

In the Psalms we read that God dwells in the praises of his people.[12] We can enter into His presence with singing, into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise.[13] Apostle Paul tells us that happiness does not come from wine, wherein is excess or too much; but rather we should be filled with the Spirit.[14] He goes on to say we should be speaking to ourselves with psalms  and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody in our hearts to the Lord. We should be giving thanks always for all things unto God and submitting ourselves one to another in the fear of the Lord.[15]

And yet, as foolish children, we strive with all our hearts and minds for the things of the world, thinking that they will bring us happiness. We yearn with the lust of our eyes, and the lust of our flesh, and the pride of life for the things of the world that pass away and are gone forever. We neglect the eternal rewards we will gain, and the presence of God that will inhabit us through obeying His words. We’d rather live for the here and now and neglect the eternal realities.

My wife and I visited Africa two years ago and the joy we experienced from helping the poor and needy was undescribable. Some of my friends patted me on the back and aplauded me when I returned for the sacrifice I had made in going to that plague filled land. But like Dr. David Livingstone the Scottish missionary of the 1800s, we replied, “We made no sacrifice.” It truly was more blessed to give than to receive.[16]

Therefore, if you are not happy, start giving to the poor, visit the widows and orphans in their distress, help those in need, even those of your own family who may need your help.[17] Be eyes for the blind, and legs for them who cannot walk, and mouths for those who cannot speak. Happiness is not in the knowing. Happiness is in the doing. Happiness is in giving. Happiness is in loving. Happiness is in forgiving. Happiness is having God, our Lord Jesus Christ, as our Lord.

“In that day I will say unto thee, Come and sit at my table, for when I was nude, you clothed me. When I was sick, you visited me. When I was discouraged, you strengthened me. For as much as you have done it unto one of the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me.”[18]

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[1] John 13:17

[2] John 13:12b NIV

[3] James 1:22

[4] Matthew 7:24

[5] Ecclesiastes 1:18

[6] Ecclesiastes 7:3

[7] Ecclesiastes 7:4

[8] John 14:23

[9] Psalm 144:15

[10] Psalm 144:14

[11] Philippians 4:6-7

[12] Psalm 22:3

[13] Psalm 100:2,4

[14] Ephesians 5:18

[15] Ephesians 5:19-21

[16] Acts 20:35

[17] James 1:27, Isaiah 58:7

[18] Paraphrase from Matthew 25:34-40

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Malcolm Muggeridge on Happiness

 

All I can claim to have learnt from the years I have spent in this world is that the only happiness is love, which is attained by gving, not receiving; and that the world itself only becomes the dear and habitable dwelling place it is when we who inhabit it know we are migrants, due when the time comes to fly away to other more oommodious skies.

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How To Be Happy In Today’s Crazy World: 3 Secrets From Research

Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree, April 24th, 2018.

Sometimes it feels like the world is actively conspiring against your happiness. There are a record number of people on antidepressants. Enough people in Western nations consume–and then excrete–the medications that they’re at detectable levels in the water supply.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

Some one in five U.S. adults is taking at least one drug for a psychiatric problem; nearly one in four middle-aged women in the United States is taking antidepressants at any given time… You can’t escape it: when scientists test the water supply of Western countries, they always find it is laced with antidepressants, because so many of us are taking them and excreting them that they simply can’t be filtered out of the water we drink every day.

For the past few decades we’ve lived under the idea that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in your noggin. And while that is true for some people, more and more research is showing that our dissatisfaction may be due less to a broken brain and more to a broken life.

You don’t see so rapid a surge in cases of depression because our genetics or grey matter changed overnight. The world has shifted in ways that are detrimental to the psychological needs of the human animal. That persistent feeling of vague dissatisfaction may be a normal response to abnormal circumstances. The canary in the coal mine.

So journalist Johann Hari spent three years on a journey of over forty thousand miles conducting more than 200 interviews with social scientists and psychologists to discover what was wrong with the way we live today that was causing such an explosion of unhappiness.

His excellent book is Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions.

What he found was that while our world has become very technologically connected, all the sources of unhappiness stem from a growing disconnection in other areas of our lives.

Disconnection From Other People: Loneliness is the equivalent of being punched in the face. I mean, literally.

Your stress response to both–the increase in your body’s cortisol level–is the same.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

Feeling lonely, it turned out, caused your cortisol levels to absolutely soar–as much as some of the most disturbing things that can ever happen to you. Becoming acutely lonely, the experiment found, was as stressful as experiencing a physical attack. It’s worth repeating. Being deeply lonely seemed to cause as much stress as being punched by a stranger.

And have no illusions, loneliness is an epidemic in the modern world. A few decades ago, the average US citizen reported having three close friends. Since 2004 the most common answer is… Zero.

I can already hear some people crowing: “I might be dissatisfied but how could it be due to loneliness? I’m always around people.”

Turns out there’s a difference between being lonely and feeling lonely. This is why someone who works a job surrounded by people and then goes home to a spouse and children, can spend very little time alone–and yet still feel profoundly lonely.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

In his studies, it turned out that feeling lonely was different from simply being alone. Surprisingly, the sensation of loneliness didn’t have much to do with how many people you spoke to every day, or every week. Some of the people in his study who felt most lonely actually talked to lots of people every day. “There’s a relatively low correlation between the objective connections and perceived connections,” he says.

So what do we need to do? To prevent feeling lonely, we must share something with those around us–something meaningful to both you and them. A belief. A cause. An activity. A goal. We need to be “in it together”–not merely together in the middle of a faceless crowd.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

As he researched this, John discovered that there was a missing ingredient to loneliness, and to recovering from it. To end loneliness, you need other people–plus something else. You also need, he explained to me, to feel you are sharing something with the other person, or the group, that is meaningful to both of you. You have to be in it together–and “it” can be anything that you both think has meaning and value.

So join a group. Harvard researcher Robert Putnam has studied group activities for decades–everything from bowling leagues to volunteer groups.

Between 1985 and 1994 involvement in community organizations declined by 45%.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

Today, people still bowl, but they do it alone. They’re in their own lane, doing their own thing. The collective structure has collapsed. Think about everything else we do to come together–like supporting your kid’s school, say. “In the ten short years between 1985 and 1994” alone, he wrote, “active involvement in community organizations … fell by 45 percent.”

Famed biologist E.O. Wilson once said, “People must belong to a tribe.” Increasingly, we don’t.

Disconnection From Values: Your pursue “intrinsic values” when you do something solely because you love it. You pursue “extrinsic values” when you chase money or status. Being a patriotic soldier is intrinsic; being a mercenary is extrinsic.

The lesson from the research is clear: the more extrinsically motivated you are, the more you feel motivated by money or status, the more depressed and anxious you are.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

Twenty-two different studies have, in the years since, found that the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you become, the more depressed you will be. Twelve different studies found that the more materialistic and extrinsically motivated you become, the more anxious you will be. Similar studies, inspired by Tim’s work and using similar techniques, have now been carried out in Britain, Denmark, Germany, India, South Korea, Russia, Romania, Australia, and Canada–and the results, all over the world, keep coming back the same.

I know some people are jumping to say, “Well, I’m not like that!” But, to a degree, we have all become more extrinsically motivated. We all care, to some degree, what others think of us and technology often amplifies this to toxic levels. Facebook and Instagram have become gladiatorial status tournaments to show off how cool our lives are.

But when we’re counting “likes” on social media, we let others control our self-esteem. And that places your own happiness outside your control. Not good.

And even if you win, you lose. Studies show that the achievement of extrinsic goals–the fancy car and the impressive promotion–bring no lasting happiness. None. Meanwhile, when we pursue intrinsic goals like being a better parent or trying to improve our writing skills so our blog posts don’t suck, we feel much happier and less anxious.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

People who achieved their extrinsic goals didn’t experience any increase in day-to-day happiness–none. They spent a huge amount of energy chasing these goals, but when they fulfilled them, they felt the same as they had at the start…. But people who achieved their intrinsic goals did become significantly happier, and less depressed and anxious. You could track the movement. As they worked at it and felt they became (for example) a better friend–not because they wanted anything out of it but because they felt it was a good thing to do–they became more satisfied with life.

You experience “flow” when you’re so involved in something that you lose track of time. You know the old saying: “time flies when you’re having fun.” Flow is a huge contributor to happiness.

And the more focused we are on extrinsic goals like status, the fewer flow states we experience.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

But when Tim studied highly materialistic people, he discovered they experience significantly fewer flow states than the rest of us. Why would that be? He seems to have found an explanation. Imagine if, when Tim was playing the piano every day, he kept thinking: Am I the best piano player in Illinois? Are people going to applaud this performance? Am I going to get paid for this? How much?

So what should we do? Yeah, we all have to pay the bills and achieving a decent level of status is a good thing, but we need to start choosing more activities that serve those intrinsic values.

Spending more time with those we love rather than those who can help us get ahead. More time playing the guitar because it’s fun rather than sharpening our Excel skills to get that promotion.

Spend a little more time with people that make you smile and doing the things that make you smile–simply because they make you smile.

So you’re connecting with people and connecting with your intrinsic values. Great. What’s another connection we’re getting less and less of?

Disconnection From Nature: All other things being equal, move closer to nature and you’ll be happier. Move away from nature and you’ll be more depressed.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

…the people who moved to green areas saw a big reduction in depression, and the people who moved away from green areas saw a big increase in depression.

Some might say that’s because rural areas have less crime or less pollution or… Wrong.

If you live in the part of a big city with lots of trees, you get happier. Cart yourself over to the section of the city that’s nothing but concrete and you get sadder.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

They compared deprived inner-city areas that had some green space to very similar deprived inner-city areas without green space. Everything else–like levels of social connections–was the same. But it turned out there was less stress and despair in the greener neighborhood.

We simply weren’t meant to spend all our time going from cubicle to couch. Feeling happier can be as simple as spending more time in nature.

The research all says that exercise makes us happier. Guess what? When you exercise outdoors the effect is even stronger.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

When scientists have compared people who run on treadmills in the gym with people who run in nature, they found that both see a reduction in depression–but it’s higher for the people who run in nature.

So what happens when you make a consistent, concerted effort to be happier?

You fail miserably. No joke. Deliberate efforts to be happier do not work… in the US and UK, that is.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

They tracked thousands of people, some of whom had decided to deliberately pursue happiness and some of whom hadn’t. When they compared the results, they found something they had not expected. If you deliberately try to become happy, you will not become happier–if you live in the United States. But if you live in Russia, Japan, or Taiwan, you will become happier.

What’s going on? It’s not that happiness is unachievable or that hard work isn’t rewarded. The issue here is that the US and UK have the most individualistic cultures. And so the efforts people in those countries make are usually individualistic…

But happiness comes from our connections to other people.

And so when we work toward just making ourselves happy as individuals we often fail. But when we work towards the happiness of a group, we usually succeed.

From Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression–and the Unexpected Solutions:

“The more you think happiness is a social thing, the better off you are,” Brett explained to me, summarizing her findings and reams of other social science.

The modern world promotes a culture of “be yourself.” But if you want to be happy, that isn’t always the best idea.

To find more joy, spend a little less time being you and little more time being us.

Dennis Edwards: Like someone once said, "Happiness is not something you find, it's something that you give to others and you receive as a blessed recompense."

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Happiness by Steve Cutts

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Harvard researchers discovered the one thing everyone needs for happier, healthier lives

By Colby Itkowitz, Washington Post, March 2, 2016:

My grandmother once told me this little story that stuck with me. One afternoon at a doctor’s appointment, her doctor moved her large purse to another chair and remarked how heavy it was. “You must be very rich,” he said to her. “I am,” she said affirmatively.

My grandparents lived modestly, still in the narrow two-bedroom rowhouse where she’d raised her family since her husband returned from World War II. They didn’t travel, eat lavish meals or shop at the finest department stores. Neither had careers that followed their passions. (She would have been an amazing teacher, he an exquisite artist.) Yet, she genuinely considered herself rich because she had a husband, children and grandchildren whom she adored.

My grandmother knew what Harvard researchers have since confirmed: Relationships are the key to a happy life.

Robert Waldinger, a Harvard psychiatrist, took over the more than 75-year-long Grant Study in 2003, becoming the fourth person to run it. He recently gave a TedTalk on it that has been viewed more than 6.5 million times since November 2015.

Waldinger felt it was important to do it. The federal government had spent millions on the study for decades, but everyday taxpayers didn’t really know what was discovered.

And there’s certainly an appetite for knowing what makes a good life.

The longest study of human development, the ongoing Grant Study is a decades-long project that began following the lives of Harvard University men selected in 1938–among them President John F. Kennedy and former Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee–and tracked every aspect of their lives. In the 1970s, that study teamed with a similar one that had been following a group of young men from inner-city Boston tenements since the 1940s. That has allowed them to contrast social status and upbringings, but otherwise everyone in the study is a white male.

Periodically the men’s physical and emotional well-being are assessed. Recently that has included genetic testing. Many conclusions have been gleaned from monitoring these lives from young adult through old age, but to Waldinger there’s one clear takeaway: The happiest and healthiest participants in both groups were the ones who maintained close, intimate relationships.

Waldinger, an Iowan who went to Harvard for undergrad and never left, has known the answer for years. He’s studied relationships his whole career and brought that perspective with him to the study. His first grant proposal as director was to invite the wives of the men–those still alive then in their 80s–to examine the impact of marriages on physical health.

Those satisfied in their relationships were happier and healthier. It was that simple.

“People who are more isolated than they want to be from others find that they are less happy, their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain functioning declines sooner and they live shorter lives than people who are not lonely,” Waldinger said in his TedTalk. “And good, close relationships seem to buffer us from some of the slings and arrows of getting old.”

Waldinger wants people to realize that the commercial projection of a good life–wealth, fame, career success–won’t bring them health or happiness. It’s the work they put into maintaining connections with other human beings that will.

Quality and intimacy, as well as stability and consistency also matter. Casual relationships, like the ones forged on social media won’t do; neither will contentious ones like an abusive marriage or an unreliable friend.

Most of the men in the late 1930s believed career achievement equated a good life. But Waldinger says it’s just as important to work harder on relationships. And for personal happiness, more so.

Since doing the TedTalk, Waldinger has received hundreds of emails. He’s started a blog to continue the conversation about what makes a good life.

He said messages range from, “I always knew it was true, but look around and people act like it’s not what is important,” to “What if you are totally alone and have no one in your life?”

To the latter he recommends they seek out ways to connect with other people, perhaps by volunteering to help people who are lonely, like the elderly.

“It’s useful to know it’s a choice worth making,” he said.

His research has inspired him to make his own changes. In his field, there is a lot of pressure to continue researching and publishing. But he’s realized that it’s his role as teacher–the connection between mentor and student–that is more satisfying, so he’s invested more time in that.

It has also spurred him to consciously reach out more to friends who are sick or struggling, even if it feels uncomfortable, because he knows how much that connection will mean to them.

“What we’d really like is a quick fix, something we can get that’ll make our lives good and keep them that way,” Waldinger said in his TedTalk. “Relationships are messy and they’re complicated and the hard work of tending to family and friends, it’s not sexy or glamorous. It’s also lifelong. It never ends.”

So, go take that longer lunch break with your co-worker. Call a friend for a long overdue catch up. It’s good for your health.

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Religion is a sure route to true happiness

By Sally Quinn, Washington Post, January 24, 2014

I keep thinking that if only I had a private plane, I would be really happy. Seriously. I can’t think of any greater luxury. You decide when you want to go. Your chauffeur pulls up to the plane on the tarmac, the stewards and pilots welcome you and carry your bags in. You settle into deep wide leather seats. You are served anything you want when you want it. If the weather is really bad, you can tell the pilot not to take off or to land. If you’re traveling to a foreign country, customs officials get on the plane to check your passport.

We all want to be happy. I certainly do. We are all looking for answers. We read self-help books and philosophy and psychology books. We try meditation and yoga and exercise. We think that if only we had more money, a higher IQ, a better marriage, more friends, more successful children, lived in a warmer climate or believed in God we would be a lot happier. We compare ourselves to others who seem to have more to determine if they are happier than we are.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Well, at least some of that is wrong.

Catherine Sanderson, a psychology professor at Amherst College, recently gave a talk, “Positive Psychology: The Science of Happiness,” in which she described things that we think will make us happy but don’t and things that really do. It turns out that a private plane would not make me happier. (I’m still not convinced.) It also turns out that people who have religious or spiritual beliefs are happier than those who don’t, no matter what their beliefs.

Religious beliefs, she says, “give people a sense of meaning.” It also gives them a social network. “It gives a sense of well being or comfort.”

Despite the misguided notion that suffering makes us better people, the fact is that happiness is good for you and others. “It matters,” says Sanderson, “as members of our society.” Happy people are more helpful, more productive and more loyal. Happy people are in better physical shape, healthier and heal faster.

Perplexingly, the things we believe will make us happy actually don’t have any effect on our sense of well being, according to Sanderson. A high IQ doesn’t make you happier. I know some really smart people who are miserable. Money? Forget it. Sanderson quotes Benjamin Franklin: “The more one has, the more one wants.” Good weather doesn’t matter either. (Tell that to me in the middle of an ice storm.) She quotes John Steinbeck: “I’ve lived in good weather and it bores the hell out of me.” The joy of major and minor life events, says Sanderson, like a new job or house is great but doesn’t last. Children? They’re cute in the abstract but having children doesn’t make you happier.

Religion, as we have said, and nature make us happy. Shopping, but not for ourselves, eating well, getting enough sleep, exercising and sex make us happy. Sex makes us very, very happy. High self-esteem and optimism make us happy. Being able to take a bad event and make it into a good event.

One often-asked question is, why are religious people happier? Sanderson thinks it’s less about what you believe than the fact that you have a community, a church, a synagogue, a Bible study group. It’s the social support network that is fulfilling. You could well be working in a soup kitchen, joining a book club or belonging to a neighborhood watch. It’s the sense that we are looking after one another that matters.

She also says that people who are believers have a certain mind-set; the power of prayer, the belief in an afterlife, the sense that someone is looking after you, that there is a higher power, that things happen for a reason. This mind-set, she says, helps people make sense of tragedy, struggles and loss. One can believe, “I’ll see this person later,” or “God only gives you what you can handle,” or “There is a silver lining in the suffering.”

Sanderson says that she is what I call SBNR, spiritual but not religious. She says she is generally happy, but even happier when she is giving her speech about happiness.

I will be taking a week in the Caribbean in February. I will go to the airport, wait in endless security lines, pay overweight for baggage, learn the flight is delayed, sit in the middle seat of the cramped economy class and buy a $6 snack. This time, though, I will be thinking of all the unhappy rich people in their private jets worrying about their richer friends in bigger jets. Not me. I will choose to be happy.

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A 75-Year Harvard Study Finds What It Takes To Live A Happy Life

Scott Stossel, The Atlantic, Apr. 25, 2013
In June 2009, The Atlantic published a cover story on the Grant Study, one of the longest-running longitudinal studies of human development.

The project, which began in 1938, has followed 268 Harvard undergraduate men for 75 years, measuring an astonishing range of psychological, anthropological, and physical traits—from personality type to IQ to drinking habits to family relationships to “hanging length of his scrotum”—in an effort to determine what factors contribute most strongly to human flourishing.

Recently, George Vaillant, who directed the study for more than three decades, published Triumphs of Experience, a summation of the insights the study has yielded. Among them: “Alcoholism is a disorder of great destructive power.” Alcoholism was the main cause of divorce between the Grant Study men and their wives; it was strongly correlated with neurosis and depression (which tended to follow alcohol abuse, rather than precede it); and—together with associated cigarette smoking—it was the single greatest contributor to their early morbidity and death.

But the factor Vaillant returns to most insistently is the powerful correlation between the warmth of your relationships and your health and happiness in old age. After The Atlantic’s 2009 article was published, critics questioned the strength of this correlation. Vaillant revisited the data he had been studying since the 1960s for his book, an experience that further convinced him that what matters most in life are relationships.

For instance, the 58 men who scored highest on measurements of “warm relationships” earned an average of $141,000 a year more at their peak salaries (usually between ages 55 and 60) than the 31 men who scored lowest; the former were also three times more likely to have achieved professional success worthy of inclusion in Who’s Who.

Vaillant’s key takeaway, in his own words: “The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’”

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The Source of True Happiness

A compilation

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God is so vastly wonderful, so utterly and completely delightful that He can, without anything other than Himself, meet and overflow the deepest demands of our total nature.—Aiden Tozer1

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The place for which He designs [human beings] in His scheme of things is the place they are made for. When they reach it, their nature is fulfilled and their happiness attained: a broken bone in the universe has been set, the anguish is over. When we want to be something other than the thing God wants us to be, we must be wanting what, in fact, will not make us happy. Those Divine demands which sound to our natural ears most like those of a despot and least like those of a lover, in fact marshall us where we should want to go if we knew what we wanted.—C. S. Lewis2

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I know what it takes in each person's life to bring you to the place where you clearly see your own insufficiency, where you come to realize the vanity of the flesh and of the world, where your need for Me becomes a genuine fact.

That is the place where you see things in the Spirit, through My eyes‚ which are the eyes of the truest‚ deepest reality. That is the place where you see that I am the center, the reason, the meaning of everything‚ and that without Me there is nothing.

The end result of allowing you to go through hardship is to bring you to this very place in spirit. This is the place where you end and I begin. This is the place where you are nothing and I am everything. This is the place where I enter you and possess you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy3

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Jesus is my God.
Jesus is my Spouse.
Jesus is my Life.
Jesus is my only Love.
Jesus is my All in All.
Jesus is my Everything.
—Mother Teresa

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Repent and believe in the Gospel, Jesus says. Turn around and believe that the good news that we are loved is gooder than we ever dared hope, and that to believe in that good news, to live out of it and toward it, to be in love with that good news, is of all glad things in this world the gladdest thing of all.—Frederick Buechner

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Only to sit and think of God,
Oh, what a joy it is!
To think the thought, to breathe the name;
Earth has no higher bliss.
Father of Jesus, love’s reward!
What rapture will it be,
Prostrate before Thy throne to lie,
And gaze and gaze on Thee!
—Frederick Faber

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What we have been told is how we men can be drawn into Christ—can become part of that wonderful present which the young Prince of the universe wants to offer to His Father—that present which is Himself and therefore us in Him. It is the only thing we were made for. And there are strange, exciting hints in the Bible that when we are drawn in, a great many other things in Nature will begin to come right. The bad dream will be over: it will be morning.—C. S. Lewis4

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To gain this closer walk with Me, where the things of this world have less allure and attraction, you must count the things of this world a loss if they keep you from Me. “How do I do that?” you ask. You do it by keeping your eyes on heaven, on eternity, knowing that the things of this earth are but a vapor that will pass away and be gone in a few short years, but the things of My Spirit will endure forever. It’s the eternal vision. The flesh and the things of this earth that often seem so important now will soon be gone.

So reach forward to the things that are before, pressing toward the mark of your high calling.5 Focus your mind on heavenly places, thinking of that which is to come rather than on the things which are, the many things that surround you.6

All things change or pass away eventually, and only I endure.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy7

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But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ.

Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead,

I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.—Apostle Paul, Philippians 3:7–10, 12–14

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Discovering that I am enough is an experience that each person must go through for themselves. Receiving the passion and desire to find this out comes from loving and cherishing My Word, from spending time with Me, and going through all of life's experiences together. Then, like someone who has fallen in love, you will want more of Me. You will want to know how I think‚ how I feel‚ how I would like for you to go about something. You then discover how wise, how resourceful, and how wonderful I am. I will become everything to you.—Jesus, speaking in prophecy8

Published on Anchor January 2013. Read by Simon Peterson.


1 The Pursuit of God.

2 The Problem of Pain.

3 Originally published June 2006.

4 Mere Christianity.

5 Philippians 3:13–14.

6 Colossians 3:2.

7 Originally published June 2006.

8 Originally published June 2006.

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