HAPPINESS VS UNHAPPINESS

I recently read an opinion editorial from the July 20,2014 New York Times by Arthur Brooks who is President of the American Enterprise Institute.   Mr. Brooks wrote about ways to achieve happiness and what can get in the way of this.  He rules out wealth, fame, power as ways to happiness and even indicates that you can be happy and unhappy at the same time with a feeling of unhappiness meaning that you are more unhappy than happy.  He then reviews different reasons that people say cause them to feel unhappy.  These include: poverty, racism, lonliness,oppression and even talking with your boss!

Mr. Brooks then shifts to things that are more likely to lead to happiness and he rules "extrinsic" [outside of one's self] goals and rules in "intrinsic" [inside of one's self] goals.  Mr. Brooks links some people's obsession with Facebook and other social media as a way of seeking fame[extrinsic goal] and that this type of recognition through Facebook is achieved by revealing only part of one's life and this can lead to feeling bad about the rest of your life.  Mr. Brooks then refers to the existence of "many studies" confirming that people who rate wealth and other extrinsic things as important to them, are much more likely to be anxious, depressed, use drugs and have physical ailments compared people who rate their relationships with family and friends, and having a purpose in life as important to them.  Mr. Brooks then refers to warnings against the love of money in the Bible and in other religions and he quotes [?] from the Dali Lama "it is better to want what you have than to have what you want."  Mr. Brooks then moves on to debunk the connection between frequent sexual activity with multiple partners and happiness.  Mr. Brooks refers to evolutionary pressures to have sex [really propagate] with as many women as possible for the survival of our species [us].   Well, this also has been shown to not bring happiness with studies concluding that the ideal number of sexual partners is one.  He then talks about a number of religions that warn about the problem of craving things [I guess this includes sexual partners] vs seeking relationships with people and valuing what you have as you share with others.  Mr. Brooks concludes by saying that he sees our lives as a struggle to maintain control over our destructive impulses to seek things [fame, power, wealth, control over others].  He concludes with the recommendation to "love people, use things [vs "love things, use people"].

So, it does seem clear that seeking things leads to unhappiness and that seeking relationships with people, caring for ourselves and others, leads to happiness.  Even so, many people still believe that if they were to win the lottery they would be happier because they would be wealthy.  Studies have found that a high percentage of people who win a lottery become depressed and feel isolated from people.  

I have repeatedly seen in others, and witnessed in myself, that choosing to act in a loving way toward ourselves and others will bring happiness and joy beyond anything that we have previously experienced....guaranteed!