Description
Happiness, Please: What You Have, and What You Need to Always Be Happy
Introduction
I once heard that happiness is just a matter of making the right choices. I agree. The problem is in knowing today what the right choice will be for tomorrow. I mean, how many times have we said, or heard people say, “It seemed like the right choice at the time.”
The real problem is that we do not know the future. The Gemora says that a wise person is “one who sees what is being born,” meaning that they calculate the potential impact of today’s events on tomorrow’s reality. But how many times have we been wrong about that? So much can happen and so much can change between today and tomorrow that we did not and could not take into account.
If you don’t believe in Divine Providence, then life is kind of hit-and-miss. Well, at least that is the way life will appear, because not believing in Divine Providence doesn’t stop it from happening. It just happens in a way that gives the disbeliever the impression that God isn’t running the show.
If you do believe in God, then you can pray for help. We don’t know the future, but God does. Not only does God know the future, He makes it. So you can say something like this:
Dear God,
Please help me make the right decisions, ones that I won’t later regret.
P.S. Would it be too much to ask for the winning number for this week’s lottery…before they draw it?
It is good to ask for this on a regular basis, at least the part about making good decisions, especially before making “difficult” decisions with far reaching consequences. The truth is, if a person is known by God as someone whose top priority is doing the right thing, God will automatically help out with that, as the Gemora says:
Someone who comes to purify themself (i.e., do the right thing), they (i.e., Heaven) help them. (Yoma 38b)
Once upon a time, that was everyone. Before Adam HaRishon laid his eyes on the Aitz HaDa’as Tov v’Ra, and then ate from it. Then man was perfectly balanced between good and evil, and could only do good. So then how did he sin? Something called alillus, but that’s a different book.
The point is that once man did sin, he tipped the scales in the wrong direction. No longer was he balanced between good and evil but heavy on the side of evil, thanks to his spiritual absorption of the yetzer hara—evil inclination. It “moved in” and virtually took over, completely altering the reality of man and the direction of history.
The Gemora describes the net result:
The yetzer hara is so difficult that even its Creator called it evil, as it says, “because the inclination of the heart of man is evil from his youth” (Bereishis 8:21). Rav Shimon ben Levi said: “Every day the yetzer of a man strengthens itself, seeking to kill the person (its host)…” (Kiddushin 30b)
But do you know what the real net effect of inheriting the yetzer hara was? Our loss of happiness. Before the first man sinned, happiness wasn’t something you had to achieve. You just were it. The cup was always half filled. It’s the yetzer hara that turns it over and makes it look half empty, making people sad, selfish, jealous, greedy, etc.
In short, the yetzer hara makes a person feel a sense of lack, even when there isn’t any. It’s only sad when someone can’t have something they don’t have. It is completely tragic when a person already has what they want and lose it because they felt there was more.
Because what we want is not always what we need, and what we feel like doing is not always what we want to do. What we need is what will help us develop into better servants of God, what we’re here in this world to become, and believe it or not, that makes us the happiest (even an atheist).
And what we feel like doing is often heavily influenced by our yetzer hara, whereas our true wants are usually more a function of our soul. Will, in essence is pure, only becoming corrupted once the yetzer hara gets a hold of it in one way or another.
This is why true and lasting happiness has been so elusive for all of history. You can’t fix what you think isn’t broken, and you certainly can’t fix something if you don’t know where it is broken. The extreme emphasis on material pleasures to compensate just makes the point even stronger.
So Chazal reduced this entire discussion to a simple but extremely insightful saying:
Who is a happy person? One who is content with their portion. (Pirkei Avos 4:1)
Easier said than done since the yetzer hara is wont to answer, “As soon as I get my portion, I will be happy with it!” leaving people discontent and madly searching for what they already have, despite so many mussar stories trying to teach the truth. How many lives have been lost and how many billions of dollars of damage have occurred, all in the pursuit of more?
It doesn’t get any more tragic than this.
But do we need another book on happiness? How many times have we been told to be happy with our portions in life, and still aren’t? Honestly, I am asking myself the same question.
My answer? I don’t know, and I won’t know until the book is finished and seen if it has helped even just one person. But in the meantime, I am inspired and happy to write it, and that’s good enough for me.
