It’s interesting to think that the “pursuit of happiness” is guaranteed to us in the U.S. Constitution. But notice that this is not “happiness” itself but the pursuit of it.
We live in a world where our lives are constantly measured by how happy we are or how happy we could be. While I could define happiness, I think the term is slightly over used.
Many of us feel we have the right to be “happy”, but happiness is an elusive creature. Our understanding of happiness, which is normally pursued for its own sake, may just be a cause for an unhappy, unfulfilled and shallow existence.
Happiness is something that is shared by humans and animals as well as a brief, sometimes singular moment that is shared by everyone. So rather than defining happiness, it is far more important to pursue something far more important to life in my eyes: meaning.
Meaning is what differentiates us from animals. Meaning is what makes human beings different and, as some would argue, what we are meant for. I think Viktor Frankl said it best: “What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost, but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him.”
A will to meaning, even in the most difficult of circumstances, is far stronger than both the pursuit of happiness or what one would define as “happiness.”
I encourage you to look for your meaning, your goals to struggle and strive for. Your will to meaning is right there within you. You just have to have the will to find it.
