[NOTE: This is still very much in draft mode. But because I strive to live by “memento mori” and recognize that at any moment I could die, I am pushing these thoughts before they are completely fleshed out.]

Introduction

I did not necessarily do it on purpose, but a lot of my reading lately has touched on a similar topic: happiness. Here are some of the recent books that in some way or another addressed this:

  • The Mindful Catholic
  • Finding True Happiness
  • The Screwtape Letters
  • Made for More
  • Trustful Surrender to Divine Providence
  • Searching for and Maintaining Peace
  • Abandonment to Divine Providence
  • The Consolation of Philosophy
  • Songs of Innocence and of Experience

Summary

To briefly summarize my takeaways, I would list the keys to happiness as follows: Be present in the current now, delighting in everything this moment brings. God is infinitely wiser than you and loves you beyond measure so trust that everything is for your greater good even if you cannot immediately recognize how. And to best utilize the present, use this current moment to serve God and others. You are happiest when not focused on yourself.

An Important Preposition

Now it is important to make the distinction that the key is to live in the moment, not live for the moment, for we are living for Heaven, the eternal “now.” So do not be a hedonist; do your duty in the moment (which is sometimes to plan).

An Image of Eternity

I had been contemplating Eternity for a while and came up with an analogy. Reading Boethius crushed my dreams for I came to discover he had explained it very simarly more than a millenia before, but perhaps my analogy is more easily grasped by modern times than the chariot example he provides so I am going to lay it out anyway.

We live in time, where events unfold sequentially. God lives outside of time–time is his invention and the byproduct of creation–where everything just is. Eternity therefore is a state of being, completely unrelated to time.

Imagine a digital photograph loading over a really old dial-up internet connection, but even slower. Rather than even line by line, in time, we experience this picture loading pixel by pixel. Sometimes it does not make sense. We have several orange pixels in a row and then all of a sudden there is a purple pixel. It makes no sense in the moment, but once the picture has fully loaded, we see the beauty in it.

God, outside of time, sees the whole picture as it is, yet this does not affect our free will, for just as we view a picture in its totality that we did not take, so each pixel within it was not decreed by mandate for many are the result of human folly and obstinance. He is however able to shape these events to make an even more beautiful picture than anyone could imagine. Must like at the Easter Vigil, when we state along the lines, “Oh happy Fall of Adam, had it not taken place we would not have the gift of Christ.”

However, God does act within time. His Will is ordained daily and there have been times in history (he even entered it in the Person of Jesus) where he plays a significant role. So to better adapt the analogy, he is very actively involved in the creation of the painting.

But people sin: imagine these as an artist’s accident where paint spills. But God can use this accident to make something even more beautiful than had that not happened. He can work around it, go over the top, even use a sharp knife to scrape the paint from the canvas so that in the final viewing it is as if it never happened.

Every analogy is imperfect, especially when dealing with a Mystery so outside of our comprehension as Time and Eternity. We just do not have the capacity to fully comprehend. It is like my dog, who is very smart. Yet even the smartest dog in the world does not have the capacity to give a lecture on original research into differential calculus. And yet the separation in our understanding is an infinitely larger abyss.

Mass

Traversing the time and space continuum may seem like a far-fetched concept relegated to the sci-fi genre but we actually do so at every Mass with the Paschal Mystery. Who would think to let their mind wander when before a time machine! And yet that’s often what I do before an even more awe-inspiring event.

(Rest In) Peace & Joy

Some seek death and deny eternity because they just want it all to stop. No more demands, no more suffering, just the cessation of their existence. Really, they want peace and the stop of entropy (which is essentially the same). For time is nothing more than constant change and that can become tiresome.

Now, we have been talking about both happiness and time. Yet, I think people put too much emphasis on “happiness” as a goal. Happiness is fleeting and difficult to identify in the moment. A better aim would be peace and joy: these are not just emotions, but states of being that can persist through other emotions. For example, one can be sad, but at peace (notice the phrasing hints at a “state” as well: feelings are fickle, states less so). One can suffer joyfully.

Once again, the focus is on the state not the gradual unfolding or fickleness of change which is the characteristic attribute of time. Peace and joy are also not limited by external factors. Happiness seems to depend on a good job, healthy finances, loving relationships, etc. And people always think they will be happy if they could just get a better job, a little more in their bank account, or get along better with their family. But peace and joy can abide/subsist through all of life’s vicissitudes.

What Happiness is Not

It also helps to look at what happiness is not. Take fear for example. Almost by definition, fear is future-focused. And yet because we know not what the future holds, there is no reason to fear. Many things might happen and in fact, it’s true that worse things than we can imagine actually will happen. But our conception of the future is not reality, not the image God holds in his perfect view of simultaneous time. It is at best a very likely approximation of what could happen. C.S. Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters emphasizes that only the present contains reality: the past is merely our biased, inaccurate memory (often viewed through rose-colored glasses) that is no longer and the future holds infinite possibilities.

So fear, anxiety, worry, and anything else looking negatively ahead are enemies of happiness, which lives in the now. But what about Hope? It is a Theological Virtue after all. Doesn’t that also look to the future? I would argue that it is still grounded in the present. Hope is how we must live our lives now. It is faithful trust, acted out in the present moment, that no matter what happens (for we cannot know), it will be for the best since God is in control and He is all Goodness. Fear projects bad things into the future, separating oneself from the current moment in an out-of-body-like experience. Hope is confidently and solidly rooted in the present moment, trusting that whatever comes next is no cause for worry or anxiety.

Happiness is also not to be confused with pleasure. Happiness cannot be altered by external factors.