What’s happiness all about?

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  Richard X. Thripp at 2008-07-05T07:21:33.

  Quite a thought-provoking article, Mom. My belief is that happiness is a means, not an end. Living for happiness, games, or to avoid conflict is shallow and cowardly. We have an increasingly materialistic society, and that too applies to happiness, because people seek it instead of something greater like service to others, which is a truer path. It’s like focusing on making money rather than providing a valuable service to others (the only persistent way to make a lot of money). Articles like this that say things like “life satisfaction occurs most often when people are engaged in absorbing activities that cause them to forget themselves, lose track of time and stop worrying” perpetuate the myth. Happiness comes from courageous action for the benefit of others, not solitary hobbies like journaling, photography, or music. If those hobbies can be purposed to educate and inspire others, then all the better. If they cannot, then the only value they have is for your personal growth. You can use them to gain the strength to serve others through other means, but the hobbies are just a shell on their own, just as happiness is a shell. A stable job, a house, a car, money, friends, a family, and a ticket to heaven (church lip-service) is misery if it’s all you’ve got and you dedicate your life to maintaining it.

  Ultimately, happiness cannot come from your hobbies, spouse, children, family, God, or even service to others. It has to come from within, from strength that you may have built through those means but that has become self-sustaining. Serving others will make you happier, as will engaging hobbies, loving relationships, etc., but only as icing on the cake, the meat of which is your own independence, intelligence, courage, mental resources, consciousness, and authenticity. Sure, you can live without these things. But would you be happy with a cake that is 100% icing? No: it would taste disgusting and make you sick. Materialists live this sickening life every day.

  One movie that made me think a lot about the roots of happiness is Star Trek: Generations. In it, Captains Kirk and Picard are trying to stop a man who is going to kill millions of people to get into “the Nexus,” a Utopian realm where you get live forever and have everything you want. The catch is that you have to consciously live knowing that it is all an illusion. Picard gets sucked into it by accident, where he has his dream: a loving family to celebrate Christmas with (he has no family back in the real world). But after ten minutes of screen time he rejects it and leaves, because he wants to live in the real world, no matter what the cost.

  When you live for your hobbies, your religion, or your family, you aren’t being real. Being real is the only way to live, which is being intelligent rather than ignorant, and knowing lies and evil so that you can embrace the truth and the good. That’s why God lets us choose good from evil: it would be meaningless if he made the choice for us. Children who live for their video games, their friends, or Hannah Montana may look happy, but they’re in fact quite unhappy. They grow up when they realize how empty and unfulfilled their existence as children was. Or at least, they hopefully grow up. Only 5% ever make the leap. The other 95% spend their lives pursuing childish, mouse-like, fake happiness, and die never finding it. If I can help just one percent of these people, then I’ve done well. If I can grow up myself, I’ve done well.

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  Richard X. Thripp at 2008-07-05T07:23:30.

  I’ve posted the above as an article to my blog. The title: How to be Happy.

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  hong at 2008-07-10T05:01:42.

  Wow, Son, very impressive comment. So, just exactly why were we placed on earth for? Did we accidentally come into being on earth and live for a number of years knowing all the joy and pain, and then disappear not knowing anything any more forever? I don’t think so.

  I believe not only were we blind-folded to come to earth to experience pain and joy, but also this is the only chance we have to shape ourselves, our thoughts, and our behaviors, to meet the expectations of God.

  Gaining knowledge and embracing the truth and the good instead of evil is important. That’s why we need to know what’s the truth and the good, and what’s evil.

  Intelligency or ability to learn to do things in a smarter way is a gift from God. We were all given different kinds of gifts and not all of us can have the same gift. For example, a person I know of is brilliant in many ways, but never learned how to drive.

  There are many aspects of personal growth in this life and the most important of all is to be good tempered, to be able to tolerate, forgive, and love others, and to find our way back home to our God, our creator. We were sent here to be trained in this school on earth. If we do well and meet God’s expectations, we’ll graduate and be rewarded with eternal happiness.

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  Richard X. Thripp at 2008-07-10T21:13:43.

  I don’t know yet. What I do know, is that it has something to do with improving ourselves and actively serving others. There is no stagnation; you can only be gaining ground or losing ground. Constant action and changes are uniquely human. Eternal happiness is inhuman. It’s just not something we do. If you’re going to be eternally happy, that person is at best going to be a mutated version of you.

  My advice is to not let Christianity dull you with inaction or block you from what you love. I don’t mean playing games or practicing hedonism. The people who think that’s what they love are misguided. But really opening peoples minds with writing like yours seems to be what you love, and with your spiritual support network where you help people find their true selves in their path to God. Don’t put stuff like that off to the afterlife.

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  hong at 2008-07-12T14:43:26.

  Certainly our willingness to help others is a measure for spiritual achievement. Not every little child would be willing to share toys until they were taught to share. When we are ready to help those whom we had opinions about, we are ready to forgive and love.

  I believe we can only grow spiritually when there is an opposition to over come. In a perfect environment where there is no difficulty, we won’t be able to have the opportunity to grow. That’s why this earthly environment was made for us to come here and grow. One of the things we learn here is to obey rules, at home when we are young, at work and in the society when we are adults. I can remember how hard it was to obey my Mother when I was young. I wanted to do things my way, but I had to give in to my Mother. Now that’s something I learned here, but not in an environment where no one imposes rules upon me.

  Just look at those of us who have failed one way or another in this life. It’s mostly due to disobediance and unwillingness to cooperate with authority. When we couldn’t learn to control our temper, pride, or are unwilling to bend, and have no fear of consequences of our behavior, that’s when trouble comes.

  I can visualize this war between evil and good. Sometimes the good spirit wins and our mind will be pure without evil thoughts and our spirit will be in true happiness. Sometimes the evil spirit raises attacks and we’ll feel miserable in some way. Without the evil spirit’s interference, our spirit will not have a chance to grow, like to stay calm in troubled situations.

  That’s why I have to view each trouble in life as a means for me to grow.

  There are all kinds of ways to help others. Some people might not need material help due to greed. Some people need spiritual help as only when they can keep the good spirit, their lives can turn around.

  Little children can keep themselves happy as long as they have ways to entertain themselves and they feel well. For adults, the mere means of finding ways to entertain themselves won’t be adequate any more. It’s time to wake up and seek something deeper and more meaningful than just watching TV and movies, playing games and sports, or dining and travel.

  So why do we need to learn and grow in this life? Just so that when we die, everything we learned and all the good things we did will be dismissed and not accounted for? That will be so meaningless. That’s why when people don’t know the purpose of learning and spiritual growth, doing good instead of evil, they abandon it all and just seek entertainment in this life like little childen do.

  We need to be assured that there will be reward after this life for everything we learned and did here, so that we have incentive to learn good and do good. Not knowing what kind of reward we’ll get or misunderstand it causes confusion and misdirection in this life. For example, some people were taught that if they kill people they hate, they’ll go to paradise. They were totally mislead by the evil spirit and their reward will be shocking to them after they die. This life is the only chance we have. Think about all the mistakes we made in the past and what chance to we have to turn the clock back to fix those mistakes. Even if there is a next life, we still have to suffer due to our mistakes until we die in this life. The punishment in its own narrow sense, not the lessen we learned, is final and irreversable. If anyone hasn’t made any big mistakes, this is a good time to think seriously, unless you don’t care about the consequences.

  This is how important it is to know the truth, the true reward, so we won’t be thinking it’s ok to kill and find out after we die what we’ll be rewarded for killing. So the next question is what’s the truth.

  I hope this message is clear and can open our minds even more.

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  Richard X. Thripp at 2008-07-15T16:55:25.

  On a non-religious path, personal growth is reward enough in and of itself. If we grow through challenges, and in the afterlife there are no challenges, then how are we to grow?

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  hong at 2008-07-16T05:54:12.

  That’s a good question. My understanding is that before we came to earth, the environment we were in could not provide more opportunities for us to grow any more. That’s why an earth was prepared for us to come here and grow. Just like in order for our muscles to grow strong, we need to exercise. For men to build muscles even more, they have to lift weight. Opposition is definitely needed for growth. So this life is the best opportunity to grow, probably the only chance to grow in an environment like this. We must take advantage of this opportunity and make progress here.

  Humiliation could make a prideful person angry or humble. Tribulation could make a boastful person bitter or meek. If we grow to be humble and meek, full of love and hope without hatred, we’ll be exalted. We’ll taste the goodness of not having to suffer again. We’ll appreciate how wonderful heaven is.

  Personal growth means nothing for a dying person if there is no hope for everlasting life. It’s hope for eternal life that takes our focus off worldly things in this life, motivates kindness, giving, and morality, and brings happiness and life to us no matter how hard the current situation seems to be. Without hope for eternal life, nothing will last and everything will be transient without everlasting value.

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  Richard X. Thripp at 2008-07-04T19:40:34.

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