The pursuit of happiness

Being around my two nephews when they were just tender younglings created many happy memories for me. One time I was having dinner with them when a silly idea came over me. I chewed my food real fine and then out of the blue I opened my mouth and stuck out my tongue to show my half-chewed meal. When they saw that, they gave out such priceless expressions that I remember them to this day. First came their look of shock (they were old enough to know this was not normal adult behaviour), then their eyes sparkled with delight, after that came big grins, and before I knew it, they were trying to one up me with their own displays of partially chewed dinner. We laughed so hard; I felt like I was the coolest aunt on earth!

When I look back on many happy moments in the past, they often happened when I was the least conscious about pursuing happiness. Usually my attention was on someone else--for example, while looking after my nephews--or when I was part of some cause with like-minded people trying to achieve a common goal. The point is, happy feelings almost never came as a direct result of my pursuit of it; they were by-products of focusing on something else so much that any self-interest of mine was diverted.

We live in an age and culture where the pursuit of happiness is the common and acceptable raison d'etre. We choose schools, careers, spouses, friends, places to live, all for the purpose of making ourselves happy. The irony is that happiness still eludes many despite their best efforts and even 'having arrived'. 

Christians should know better than to follow this path. The Bible never tells us to pursue happiness; instead we are to seek God, His righteousness, His Kingdom. There is no promise that we will be happy by pursuing these (in eternity for sure, but not necessarily in the day to day), but we can know that we're not wasting our lives grasping for something that can never be obtained by direct pursuit.