(The following ideas have been born, in part, due to a severe health challenge I’ve been dealing with for the past 12 years: losing my voice and the ability to speak.
Also, the ideas below have been endorsed by the following distinguished rabbanim: Rav Mendel Blachman, Rav Yechiel Perr zt’l, Rav Moshe Brown, Rav Mordechai Willig, and Rav Akiva Tatz)
We Need to Redefine True Happiness
Everyone wants to be happy, but we all struggle with how to attain it.
We all have preconceived notions as to what happiness actually is, and these notions are most often based on the culture and society around us. But what if there was a state of happiness that could be self-actuated at all times through all societies and civilizations no matter the historical period? Must there always be a “pursuit of happiness” or is there a state of happiness that is always within my reach no matter what struggles and challenges I face in my life?
Let’s explore this extremely vital topic.
We are all physical beings and we need physical things to survive in this world day to day, week to week, month to month and year to year. Beyond mere survival and living on very basic needs, we all seek a certain level of comfort and ease in our physical existence. Yes, we can survive on bread and water and with basic clothing and a roof over our heads, but we know there is much more available in the material world and we naturally desire more comfort and pleasures. When we see what is available to make our physical lives more pleasurable, we regularly crave more and more things. It’s possible to be happy with basics, but it becomes extremely difficult when we raise the bar of our expectations and needs as yesterday’s luxuries become today’s needs.
Can Anyone Be Happy With Western Values?
One hundred years ago, no one had air conditioning in the summer and today we wonder how they could survive a summer without it, and the list goes on and on, ad infinitum. If our definition of happiness and comfort is based on what we have in terms of our physical comforts, then we will inevitably be left disappointed. We will be subject to anxiety and worry, as we will always anticipate and wonder whether the anticipated comfort will come to fruition. We will also be subject to frustration and disappointment, as it is inevitable that in many areas of life the anticipated comfort or experience will not manifest itself as we had hoped, leaving us feeling empty, dissatisfied and discontented. As we see with many Hollywood celebrities, they are never happy for very long and their emptiness persists because their r goals are based on Western values of happiness.
In Western society, the amount and variety of pleasures is always increasing and if we keep embracing the pursuit of these pleasures we will experience a never-ending race with the resulting disappointments. This is compounded many times over if we base our happiness on what we see those around us attain. If a nice house 100 years ago had a few rooms, the most basic houses today would be considered mansions in those times. The fact that almost everyone today has indoor plumbing means that the common man today enjoys much better circumstances than kings did many, many years ago. But this fact will never resonate with us if we keep watching what our neighbors keep adding to their material lives.
It is quite clear that if we are basing our happiness on the attainment of our desired physical pleasures, we will most often come up lacking and this will affect our overall feeling of happiness. Rather, the way to get happy and to remain happy is to totally transform the way we understand happiness.
A Genuine Path to Happiness
As believing Torah Jews, we know we must serve Hashem and we do this by fulfilling the mitzvos He has given us. We serve Him by overcoming our temptations and desires to do the wrong thing and by trying to make proper choices utilizing the power of free will that He gave us. If we try hard in these spiritual pursuits, we know that we are serving Hashem even when we fail because Hashem values our efforts. The primary factor goes by how difficult it is for us and no matter how many times we fail, if we make good efforts, Hashem values them tremendously. This is the depth of what the Mishna in Pirkei Avos (5:26) states, “lefum tzaara agra, The reward is in proportion to the exertion.”
How can we define happiness within this context? When we live our lives trying to overcome our natural inclinations, when we live a life of genuine effort, we won’t usually feel ecstatic all the time or even feel many positive feelings of joy and happiness. But we will feel an overriding sense of serenity and satisfaction that we are living life the way it should be lived. We will experience a menuchas hanefesh which one might describe as an even-keeled experience, as opposed to a life of joy which would depend on a positive/good experience.
The major benefit of focusing one’s life on succeeding in free will decisions is that it helps maintain one’s emotional health through a sense of satisfaction, fulfillment, meaning and purpose. We can describe this as the concept of attaining emotional health. Emotional health is not necessarily a positive/good experience, but it is simply the absence of a negative one and therefore a mere even-keeled experience. Most of us won’t go to sleep at night thinking, “I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow to experience the positive/good life of being emotionally healthy,” but we will live serene, content lives, rather than feeling emotionally unhealthy.
Emotional Health
Emotional health is a very similar experience to physical health. We can describe emotional health as an even-keeled experience, just like physical health is an even-keeled experience.
Physical health is not a positive/good experience; it is merely the absence of unwanted physical pain and therefore a mere even-keeled experience. Nobody goes to sleep at night thinking to himself,”I can’t wait to wake up tomorrow to experience the positive/good life of physical health”; he’s simply in pain when he is physically unhealthy.
If we redefine happiness as menuchas hanefesh, satisfaction and an emotional healthy state, we would be able to feel this way constantly.
It is true that there are holy and righteous people who can live life feeling truly ecstatic even for daily basic health and regular ordinary physical experiences. They can appreciate “regular, ordinary” mitzvah accomplishments and be very joyous with them. However, most of us are not on the level to feel the joy of mitzvos, or the love for Hashem in all that we do, which can bring ecstasy to these tzaddikim. Many may focus on olam haba and the goal of receiving reward in the next world to feel happiness in this world, but that too remains elusive for most of us, as we don’t actually see those results here, even though we believe and accept the truth and reality of olam haba. So, for most of us, the goal of living an even-keeled, neutral, meaningful life should be paramount.
A Day in the Life
Let’s contrast a person who strives to make good choices, aiming for higher spirituality and service, with a person whose goal is pleasure. “Moshe” wakes up, resists the urge to turn off the alarm, washes his hands, and says brachos with concentration. At shul, he overcomes the desire to rush his prayers. Throughout the day, he says brachos with kavana, chooses healthy food, and resists the desire to scroll through his phone or look at inappropriate images. At work, he strives to be pleasant and diligent. He feels satisfied and accomplished.
“Yehoshua,” by contrast, hits the snooze button in the morning. Running late, he rushes through shul and eats sugary cereal when he returns. He idles over his phone, listens to pop music in his car, and explodes when a colleague makes a mistake which hurts his team. Always giving in to the drive for pleasure, Yehoshua never feels satisfied.
(Qualification to the above: We assumed all these desires for pleasure were merely “wants.” Of course, for example, if one determines that his desire to listen to pop music in the car is an actual “need,” then he certainly should listen to the music until he gets back to a state of neutral equilibrium, at which point he should ideally stop listening to music and resume Torah learning in the car as proper service to Hashem.)
The great service of Hashem we have discussed actually falls under the structure of the mitzvah to walk in the ways of Hashem, “V’Halachta B’Derachav.”The Rambam discusses this mitzvah at great length in Hilchos Dei’os (perakim 1 and 2).
After spending a decade in isolation, Samuel Haft has developed a philosophy on happiness that has been endorsed by rabbinic leadership, and is now disseminating his ideas throughout the world to promote authentic Jewish practice and emotional well-being in today’s society. He can be reached at [email protected]
