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
reading on broadway, a photo by MarkelConnors on Flickr.
'Dickins found himself reading Plath at a very difficult time, five years ago. He was, he says, "so seriously sick, I nearly perished of hopelessness". Of all the treatment that he received, he adds, "nothing worked like reading".
He describes himself as "a slow reader and maybe too speedy a writer", but reading and re-reading Plath was a kind of saving grace. He found himself "reloving, if there is such a word, her poetry". On devising a play that builds on that experience, he says, "There's a way to write for someone, and not like them ..." '
from 'Theatre play a tribute to poet's talents: Plath's potent words find voice on stage', Philippa Hawker, The Age, 10 September 2013, p. 18
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/stage/plaths-potent-words-find-voice-on-stage-20130909-2tg5x.html
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/barry-dickins-is-back/3053296
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hzkx6gfyUIk
http://www.theage.com.au/entertainment/books/best-and-worst-of-times-in-a-bleak-house-20120325-1vs7k.html
