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We Hold These Truths: The Pursuit of Happiness
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.
This line is the start of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence of “the thirteen United States of America”. It is well-known to most Americans and serves as an inspiration to others around the world. However, the last four words are misunderstood in the 21st century. The Pursuit of Happiness did not mean chasing after the emotion or the feeling of being “happy”. To the Founders, this term meant living your life as you saw fit. It was about shaping your own destiny, instead of having that destiny shaped for you. That is a high ideal an imperfect nation does not always achieve for its people.
By many measures, Americans today report less happiness than in the past. Here we are most clearly talking about the emotion. There are those studies regarding happiness. One, for example, shows parents have less overall happiness than non-parents. Another one I like shows happiness drops in our mid-20s and then starts to go back up in our mid-50s. At 51, that sounds pretty good to me. Sorry for all you younger folks.
Many people focus on being unhappy. They are anxious and miserable. Social media does not help. We have often violated the Tenth Commandment: You Shall Not Covet Your Neighbor’s Goods. This is even worse in a world of social media, where not only do we see the great house others live in, but we also get to see their fantastic vacations and lives that at least appear to be so much perfect than our own. This means that often we chase happiness by focusing on the acquisition of things, such as money, power, and material items. When we get that new car, we are happier than before. At least for a while. Then we get used to the car and the increased positive feelings fade away. Then it is on to the next thing. And then the next. The unhappy reality is that none of us can maintain a sense of happiness by chasing after things. We just get used to them.
What does work in life is the practice of gratitude. That is not saying, “You should be grateful”. No one can tell someone else how he or she should feel. The practice of gratitude is a practice of self-care. What science has shown is that by zeroing in on the positive things in our lives we experience more happiness and joy. What a concept! It is just that our brains tend to focus on the negative to keep us safe. It is difficult to practice gratitude.
So, how do we engage in this practice? That is surprisingly simple. One great way is to write down three things for which you are grateful. Just three, and you can even have repeats. Some of the biggies can be easy, such as family and health. But those of us living in the first world have all sorts of things to think about. Did you have a hot shower today in clean water? Did you have enough to eat today? Were you able to park far away from the store and be able to walk the distance instead of having to use that closer handicapped spot?
Each of us has so many positive things in our lives we can list. I promise you, if you can practice gratitude, you will have a greater sense of wellbeing.
It might even help in your Pursuit of Happiness.
Bryan is a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC) and National Certified Counselor (NCC). He has been licensed since June 2000. He is also involved in training new therapists as a Certified Professional Counselor Supervisor (CPCS) since 2011. He earned his Bachelor of Science in 1992 from Florida Tech, and his Master of Arts in Psychology from the Georgia School of Professional Psychology in 1996. Bryan started as a case manager before becoming a therapist, working in community behavioral health, where he practiced as part of a multidisciplinary team consisting of other therapists, case managers, nurses, and doctors. It was in this environment where he learned to treat the large variety of issues brought to the clinic by a diverse population. Bryan currently has a private practice in Marietta Georgia, seeing adults.
This was originally published at www.TalkForward.com
Published in Group Writing
I think the practice is about creating a mental habit.
I don’t know about genetic predisposition to “happy”. The general disposition might be depression, but I’d think practicing this would help highlight that you might need medication if you have a good life that you like but are still depressed.
I was depressed for a while. The thing that pushed me out was realizing that I can be content with where I am today and just make small choices today that change tomorrow. It was like a light switch flipped.
That’s the Lockean background.
Actually, pursuit of happiness in the Letter Concerning Toleration means property rights AND religious liberty.
Whenever I have heard this explained it has come out exactly as you described: ownership of property, which makes sense that one should be entitled to what they produce or what they trade for what they produce.
Did you read what DonG posted?
Seriously, it is hard to take this question seriously. The Founders considered America to work for a moral people. This was important to them. They would have scoffed at the idea of a pleasure principle being a guiding light. I don’t have to go dig up citations for that.
It goes back further. At college, Tho. Jefferson studied under a Scot and was likely taught about the Scottish Enlightenment. The language of the Declaration is similar to passages of Hutcheson and Locke. The idea of “happiness” to the Scots was not about personal amusement, it was about fulfillment of God’s plan, utilizing your talents and helping the community. Think of this as the King cannot come between you and your path to heaven.
That is how I have understood it
Yes, I would think “pursuit of happiness” would be grounded in the classical Christian understanding of happiness resulting from conformity with God’s will for your life (doing what you ought), and not the libertarian notion that happiness is doing whatever you want. Even people who undergo great suffering can be happy if they recognize their lives as serving the purpose for which they were made. Look at the lives of the saints.
Ultimately, you cannot be happy unless you are good (virtuous). And you can’t keep a republic unless most people know what virtue is and pursue it, as we’re finding out.
My intros to the Locke angle (which is about all the help I can give on this topic):
Western Chauvinist:
“Yes, I would think “pursuit of happiness” would be grounded in the classical Christian understanding of happiness resulting from conformity with God’s will for your life (doing what you ought), and not the libertarian notion that happiness is doing whatever you want. Even people who undergo great suffering can be happy if they recognize their lives as serving the purpose for which they were made. Look at the lives of the saints.”
I think this interpretation comes closest to what was meant by “pursuit of happiness”.
To add to Flicker’s comment:
the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution reads:
No person shall …….be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use without just compensation
This legal right leaves out “pursuit of happiness” and replaces it with “property” and then conditions that right with the phase “without due process of law” which puts this pursuit in a more appropriate moral context.
Thank you, Bryan, for those wise words. Being happy is more about being grateful.
For the Founders, it was the freedom to pursue rather than the goal that mattered most. Today the goal of libertinism matters. How society has fallen since the Founding.
I’m just trying to impart a little bit of wisdom I’ve learned across the years.
Great post Bryan. To me, based on my Dad’s lessons, happiness for me was the absence of tragedy in my life. Was I ever lucky. The most tragic thing to me was my parent’s divorce. In 1959. Then survived Viet Nam (a Navy guy so no big deal), marriage and kids and work pressure, wife’s breast cancer, and got through it ok. Dad lived until 95. Lost a sister a few months ago (71 in bad health for years). Docs say I may make it to 90 no matter how much port I drink.
Good post, Bryan. Very often the difference between happy and unhappy people is not the circumstances they live in, but how each person views their life. If a person wants to find reasons to be unhappy, they can, and almost all of us can find plenty of reasons to be grateful.
This is where I am an abnormal person. I’ve had my Mustang GT for 11 years now and the honeymoon still isn’t over. It’s still a thrill. Sure, it would be nice to be able to buy a brand new one and throw a few (or several!) thousand dollars into customizing it, but my 2011 still provides me as much pleasure as when it was brand new. Seeing, hearing, and driving @concretevol’s awesome Shelby GT350 makes me happy for him, not envious.
I thank God every time I drive my 1995 Mitsubishi Montero. And it still can get up a hill if I downshift. And I love it.
It helps if you don’t have personality disorders on both sides of your family tree. lol
The whole system steals most people’s agency. You have to treat it as a racket to survive and prosper. One way or another we have to reverse this problem. It started under Woodrow Wilson and the trend has hardly ever changed.
When one is then born into the racket and adjusts to the conditions imposed by the system without either realizing or caring that it is not what it has been declared to be, any effort to then begin a comprehensive restoration will be a job bigger than any generation in our memory has attempted.
The concept and the basis of the U.S. Constitution is all about process. Most of the discussion in Bryan’s post here shows how that is true.
Because you can engage in your practice of gratitude for what you have and celebrate what he has.
This is a nice summary of what is wrong with everything. It’s pretty much what you are saying.
Locke had it right to begin with but Jefferson, wordsmith and the closest thing we had to a liberal in the modern sense, made it sound better by saying “pursuit of happiness”, which of course doesn’t really mean what Locke had in mind. It’s taken us quite a few years to discern Jefferson’s fundamental error.