The Age, Opinion
March 22 2003
The pursuit of happiness is the first step in a long journey to personal and global peace, writes Hugh Mackay.
It is easy to be sceptical about the pursuit of happiness - partly because it is the most elusive and unpredictable of emotions, partly because most personal growth and development comes from pain, not pleasure, and partly because it seems such a vacuous focus for our all-too-brief and fragile visit to this planet. Yet, when people try to define their goals, they often seek nothing more than this: 'I just want to be happy.'
Ancient wisdom suggests that the selfish pursuit of happiness is actually counter-productive (rather like the quest for 'national identity'): the more you seek it, the less likely you are to find it. But there is another possibility, illuminated by a different question: whose happiness is worth pursuing?
There was once a rule at a Sydney boarding school that required girls at the dining table to restrain themselves from asking for something to be passed to them: they had to wait for it to be spontaneously offered to them by someone else.
I do not know whether that rule has survived, but it had a serious point. It was a way of teaching those girls that the pathway to personal fulfillment is not straight: you achieve your goal indirectly, by first attending to the needs of others. The more assiduously you pass the salt to everyone else, the more likely it is that someone will eventually decide to pass it to you.
If that sounds a bit too calculating, well, so be it: even the so-called golden rule has always had a collateral benefit buried in the subtext: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you' might sound like unbridled altruism, but there is a strong implication of reciprocity in there. If you treat others the way you would like them to treat you, you improve the chances that they will indeed treat you just like that.
But reciprocity is a moral minefield. It all comes down to motive: if you treat others well only because you expect reciprocal treatment, that comes dangerously close to exploitation, and the satisfaction you seek is likely to elude you. The trick is to embrace the central paradox of human happiness: we are generally at our happiest when we strive for the happiness of others. 'Look out for No.1' was always a dark seductive con.
'I've never been happier' is the almost universal cry of volunteers who prepare meals for the poor, read to the blind, visit the sick and lonely, or relieve suffering, hardship, poverty or despair in any way. It is also the common experience of those who devote their working lives to professions like teaching, medicine and counselling - where the entire focus is on the wellbeing of the pupil, the patient or the client, and where remuneration is a peripheral issue.
The pursuit of happiness, it turns out, is a worthwhile exercise, provided we remember whose happiness we are pursuing.
Perhaps that is the first step in the long journey to personal, and ultimately global, peace.
Hugh Mackay is an author and social researcher.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/03/21/1047749940975.html
