Listen:
OPENING WORDS:
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
-- Albert Camus
Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.
-- Albert Schweitzer
MEDITATION READING: Beaudreault's Happiness Formula
Happy?
An odd word, meaning everything and nothing -
Since no one can explain it, though everyone tries,
Even the scientists -
Who speak of pre-frontal lobes and bio chemicals...
Did you know that only humans have such lobes?
Meaning that unlike other animals, we are given the challenge of thinking about a possible future...
Mmmmm...
While dogs and cats, myna birds and ferrets live only in the "now" -
(Which new-age gurus acclaim)
But then, is there joy in knowing of a potentially better
Or worse
Existence?
And is it a relief to know we will someday die?
Rover and Puss-n-boots don't know that - as they cavort til they drop.
Happy?
Are we happy yet -
Being pre-frontally aware of our mortality;
Stuffed with meds to keep us on an even-keel -
Or even on the rise toward bliss?
Happy?
Whatever does it mean?
And could it be an affront to the simplicity of our being alive in the first place?
To be insensate to future pain and demise?
Philosophers claim joy in momentary awareness:
So back to Rover and Puss-n-boots and the joy of cavorting with them;
Of watching your grandchild chase dandelion seeds in the wind;
Or finally accomplishing a long-awaited task;
Or learning something age-old but brand-new to you;
Or discovering the exact mix of colors to put on your newly stretched
canvass;
Or bumping into the right word to express on paper what you want to say.
Money can help;
And love;
And fine dining;
And trips to an azure sea;
And applause;
Respect;
Admiration;
And health.
But each of us is so intricately woven with specificity that none of us will exactly agree
As to felicity.
So, we flee
From that which makes others move toward;
The pot of gold is sometimes mere dross;
The rainbow but a reminder of what one does not have;
The lucky charm but a mockery to a life filled with sorrow.
But really!
It is life
It is real
It is you
It is me
It is potential
(Until we help to create the joy we seek).
But ultimately?
Ultimately, we must be waved under by the awareness of our mortality -
Knowing that life is brief, that joy is fleeting, but that to be alive in the first place
Is nothing short of a miracle in this starry, starry universe.
-- Don Beaudreault
SERMON: "Happy?"
DEFINING THE WORD
According to Howard Mumford Jones in his book The Pursuit of Happiness:
What a glittering generality, this word "happiness." How to define it? Let us begin by stating the reality that the term belongs to a classification of words, the meaning of which everybody knows but the definition of which nobody can give.
So everyone has a different opinion on this subject. It really is up to the individual. What might make you happy might not make me happy at all! Indeed, let us not bring this one up for a congregational vote because it would simply go everywhere - which in truth would be nowhere.
Now, I have come to the conclusion after having worked for years with Unitarian Universalist retirees who never want to stop being active, that George Bernard Shaw is probably correct when he says of your sociological type:
The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.
Or to state it another way - according to someone in our congregation who reminds me periodically: "You thought you were coming to a sleepy congregation of older people? Ha!"
Yes, I have found the opposite to be true - and frankly, you people tire me out!
So, go ahead and stay busy, and because you don't have the time, you can avoid the question of whether or not you are happy.
Still, I guess that your being busy is what makes you happy - even though I often hear you complain about being too busy. (But I do not really believe you are complaining when you say this.)
Perhaps - since you all are too busy to find the time to define whether or not you are happy - I should stop the sermon now
(This is not a rhetorical remark and needs no rejoinder from you.)
Therefore, I will continue.
So let us ask: Happy? Are you happy? Is anyone ever really happy - for very long?
Truly these questions are foundational to all religious beliefs - with varying explanations, most stating flat-out that you can't really expect to be happy - at least not in THIS life. Most organized religion would collapse if pulpit pontificators and earnest theologians would stop holding up "eternal life" as some kind of prize to be sought after since you are condemned to suffer in the life as you presently know it.
People just seem to like to suffer in the name of being religious and then to make recompense for it before they go back to suffering again.
Naturally, we Unitarian Universalists have always countered that assumption because we try to achieve joy in this very life. Or, as that Great Agnostic Robert Green Ingersoll put it:
One world at a time!
So then, how do some folks perceive happiness in THIS life?
Here is a small list, based upon common assumptions.
Happiness is:
A good cook
A good bank account
A state of being
A state of doing
A rare wine
Social activity
A withdrawal from the maddening crowd's ignoble strive
The perpetual possession of being well deceived
A butterfly which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you
Two kinds of ice cream (Charlie Brown said this)
ONLY THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, NOT A GUARANTEE OF IT
Again, there is no limit to the number of definitions for "happiness." But we must be clear: nobody anywhere at anytime has ever been guaranteed that being happy will be their lot in life.
Ben Franklin, that quasi Unitarian Universalist, made that perfectly clear when a rabblerouser once complained to that esteemed gentleman that the United States Constitution was a mockery:
Where is all the happiness it guarantees us? I certainly didn't get my share!
Franklin replied benignly:
My friend, all the Constitution guarantees you is the pursuit of happiness. You have to catch it for yourself.
And yet, many think they have such an entitlement, such a birthright. And because they do - and expect happiness so assiduously, expecting so much, they sometimes wind up very unhappy, indeed.
They are such idealists, really.
My work years ago as a Suicide Prevention Counselor, taught me that those who think they have some kind of inherent prize called "happiness" - the idealist who expect so much in life and in love - are the ones who are sometimes the unhappiest ones.
Life just isn't fair, you know.
People are constantly misinterpreting that immortal phrasing of Tom Jefferson's (in which he paraphrased George Mason):
We hold these truths to be self-evident. That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
It was Robert Frost who contemplated what Jefferson meant when he talked about "the pursuit of happiness."
Said that venerable man in his poem "The Black Cottage":
That's a hard mystery of Jefferson's.
What did he mean? Of course the easy way
Is to decide it simply isn't true.
It may not be. I heard a fellow say so.
But never mind, the Welshman got it planted
Where it will trouble us a thousand years.
Each age will have to reconsider it...
The truth of the matter is that 90% of people in our country say that are "at least fairly happy." The very few who say they are "very happy" are mostly women.
One particularly grumpy old man was the Caliph Abdalrahman, ruler of 10th century Cordova, Spain who pronounced one day:
I have now reigned above fifty years in victory or peace, beloved by my subjects, dreaded by my enemies, and respected by my allies. Riches and honors, power and pleasure, have waited on my call, nor does any earthly blessing appear to have been wanting to my felicity. In this situation, I have diligently numbered the days of pure and genuine happiness which have fallen to my lot...they amount to: fourteen! On man, place not thy confidence in this present world!
So much for pursuit!
SOME UNITARIAN UNIVERSALISTS WAYS OF BEING HAPPY
But what about Unitarian Universalists? How do we pursue or obtain happiness?
Certainly, FREEDOM, makes us happy. Most of us left a closed system of beliefs and actions, ones that would categorize us, box us in to a prescribed way of thinking and being.
Essential to the joy we achieve by being free, is a sense of accomplishment (back to those active retirees).
J. B. Priestly spoke to this point of being actively involved in the world - and feeling that he has accomplished something - when he writes in his delightful book of essays called Delight:
The delight springs from a sense of release. I have been in prison with this one idea, and now, I feel I am free...I am now the master and not the slave. I can go to China, learn the clarinet, read Gibbon again, study metaphysics, grow strange flowers in hothouses, lie in bed, lunch and dine with old friends and brilliant acquaintances, look at pictures, take the children to concerts, tidy up the study, talk properly to my wife...
And yet, how free do we want to be? And for how long before we must start up a new project, begin a new book, create a new life?
So, is constant freedom (at least in some ways) a guarantee of happiness? How many of you have said to me you thought you were free when you retired, only to find yourself wanting new challenges rather than mere stagnation?
Ergo: involvement with this congregation, or with artistic, intellectual, or social activism - and with volunteerism of so many kinds.
Still, are you really choosing these things to do - or are they choosing you; perhaps controlling you? Are you feeling trapped?
But is that what you want? And why do some of you NOT want to be involved in things? Or with people?
Oh, the definitions of happiness in regard to being "free" are numerous. Back to where we started when this sermon began!
Think about it this way - you know the Greek myth about Sisyphus who cheated Death by coming back from the Underworld (until he was dragged back to it)? As his punishment he was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain and actually reaching its summit, only to have it fall back on him time and again. This constant effort and his eventual understanding of the futility of his life (thereby freeing him from assumptions) led Albert Camus to say of him in his own telling of the Sisyphus legend that: "Sisyphus was basically a happy man."
Such a situation - one where we receive deeper realization about our lives, despite the hardships that have caused this - can be a happifying thing for some, but not for all!
Another Unitarian Universalist way to achieve happiness is to have a sense of SELF WORTH.
No one says this better than Ralph Waldo Emerson who opined these famous lines:
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.
One of my mantras, to be sure - especially when I feel that I am in a minority when it comes to what I think or feel or say.
I suggest you use this phrase as well when you need it.
I really do think that thinking people are so hard on themselves. Perhaps this way of being in the world can be explained in various ways, but whatever or whoever brought those to this modus operandi needs to be exorcised.
It is when we realize our fullest humanity - with all its insufficiencies as well as extraordinariness - that we can then, treat ourselves more softly. And if we can do this, we really then do honor the creative processes that brought us here in the first place, placing is into the natural scheme of things, reminding us that we are, after all, nature made manifest.
I love what that wonderful contemporary poet Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Oliver suggests to us:
You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves...Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things."
It is not that we must defend ourselves from those who are not in accord with us - believing that only in staying the course of an ardent individualism can we maintain self-worth.
It is, rather, as Mary Oliver suggests, awareness that we have a "place in the family of things." That we are not, in truth alienated - or even special - but merely part of the all-in-all that pervades our existence.
That is really humility toward existence - and acceptance of self as part of the creative scheme.
The final thing I want to hold up as a Unitarian Universalist approach in gaining happiness is LOVE.
But what possible way of defining that would ever be clear - for anyone, Unitarian Universalist or otherwise! And then to connect the word with the word "happy" - how much more of a conundrum is that!
Still, I do believe that we Unitarian Universalists are seeking love, and in that search we are happy.
We want to relate to others and to the world of all sentient and non-sentient things. We want to love and be loved in return - despite our defenses which sometimes are put up via our intellectual meanderings evidenced in our loquaciousness - i.e. in the fact that we talk too much, and listen too little.
If only we could learn to slow down, even stop, and start to appreciate more - to see that love is all around us, waiting for our acceptance.
That as we are open, we receive. That in giving we are made whole.
It is, I believe, what the present-day thinker Thomas Moore is talking about in his book The Education of the Heart when he speaks of our need to capture our sense of "soul." Says he of the term:
that unknown component which makes meaning possible, turns events into experiences, is communicated in love, and has a religious concern.
"Religious"? Ah, yes! It is a way of being in the world, this religious perspective. For me the word "religion" references the very origin of the word from the Latin: "religare" meaning to bring together, to bond. And in modern psychological terms, to forge the seemingly disparate aspects of our "self" (our thoughts, feelings, actions) into a congruent state of being - where we are, in truth, one.
And in doing this, we discover love of self and by application, love of others and all existence.
It is both a pursuit and a possibility.
So: Are you happy yet?
What makes you happy? And do you have a plan to get more of it?
Well, whatever it is for you, go out and get it.
And remember the words of Ramona Anderson when you do so:
People spend a lifetime searching for happiness; looking for peace. They chase idle dreams, addictions, religions, even other people, hoping to fill the emptiness that plagues them. The irony is the only place they ever needed to search was within.
CLOSING WORDS:
If only we'd stop trying to be happy we'd have a pretty good time.
-- Edith Wharton
Happiness is having a large, loving, caring, close-knit family - in another city.
-- George Burns