I want to start with a comment in the local fishwrap that is a lie. Like all good lies, it contains a partial truth: some of the most peaceful people you will meet have gone to hell and back. But saying this is happiness, and that is the goal? May it not be.
There is a bit of a myth that happy people are naturally lucky and stuff magically goes their way. That they have an easier or shinier path than most. Though sometimes there is a grain of truth in this I have to say I generally observe the opposite.
Happier people, or the deliberately happy, tend to be those who have been through some tremendous suffering or trauma of some sort. The sort of circumstances that change life forever.
I have worked with some deliberately happy people who have been through unimaginable horrors. Loss of a child. Father killed in a car accident. Son addicted to P and a course of self-destruction. Bankruptcy. The most vile custody battle imaginable. Falsely imprisoned. Horrendous marital emotional abuse. Loss of a limb. Rape. Victimised at work to the point of a court case. The list goes on. Bad stuff happens to good people. All the time.
Yet, after time and support for deep grief and processing, many of these people go on to be the most deliberately happy people I know. They gain a new perspective on happiness from the depths of their suffering, their happiness becoming the veritable phoenix, rising from the ashes.
When life (or God or fate or the universe or just other people messing with your life) deals you a bad hand, an interesting thing can happen. Either it can be the circumstance that goes on to define your whole life.
Happiness cannot be the goal: nor can mindfulness. That is an existential answer: I choose to be happy by an act of will. That will not save us. That does not make sense of what we go through. And it is the only answer the secular state has: one of the reasons they Like Buddhists is that they have techniques around this life, and care not for the hereafter.
But there is a life after this, and we need to consider that such teaching makes us march to perdition while discussing our spiritual growth.
Why are we in danger every hour? I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.
We believe in a Bodily Resurrection. This may or may not be a comfort: there is a second death and there is not a thing nice about it. I think Lewis was being too nice when he said that we will be left alone if we reject God.
I’m with the older theologians here. We will be judged: for God loves justice. And if we reject his mercy, we will get the punishment our actions deserve. For there is not one of us who are righteous.
Be careful about happiness and spirituality. They are proxy measures. The true measure is know to God, who judges correctly and gives us this teaching: it is by the consequences of one’s life that one judges.
