THE MEANING OF LIFE

 
     I enjoy solving crypto-quotes, and occasionally I find one that touches me for some reason.  A few days ago, I encountered one that is the genesis of this essay.  It comes from a person named Roy T Bennett: The most important thing is this: to be able at any moment to be free to choose a life that makes you happy.  
 
     Mr Bennett is a version of Dale Carnegie’s The Power of Positive Thinking, and the wording of this quote should show that the philosophical/moral basis from which it emerges is self-satisfaction/self-fulfillment.  Let’s try to unpack this for a bit.  After all, there is no “heresy” that is not at least partially true (maybe even mostly true).
 
 I begin with the old Baltimore Catechism.  Question: “Why did God make me?”  Answer: “God made me to know, love and serve Him in this world and be happy with Him in the next.”  So happiness is a worthy goal for life. 
 
We can look at the creation story in Genesis 1, which is punctuated with the phrase “God saw that it was good” and “God saw everything He had made, and found it very good.”  In other words, God was pleased with [happy with] creation.  God extended outside the self to find (or generate) happiness.
 
 Aristotle knew this, as well.  In his Nicomachean Ethics, he writes: “It is thought that every activity…has for its object some good. …Now if there is an end [goal] which as moral agents we seek for its own sake…it is clear that this must be the good, that is the absolutely good. …[W]hat is the supreme good attainable in our actions?  Well, so far as the name goes there is pretty general agreement.  ‘It is happiness’…meaning by ‘happiness’ living well or faring well.” 
 
 Sorry to hit you with Greek philosophy and old-time catechesis(!), but it’s clear that happiness is not a small thing.  But back to Mr Bennett’s quote.
 
 Happiness cannot ethically be found, it seems to me, by doing what pleases me (to the exclusion of others).  If this were the case, all morality would be reduced to the behaviors that individuals can freely engage in, to their own satisfaction without reference to the effects those behaviors might have on others.  The fancy word for this view is “solipsism,” when the self is the primary or sole referent to one’s activity.  Here’s an example from an oldie: Please release me, let me go/For I don’t love you any more./To waste my life would be a sin/So release me and let me love again.  (Engelbert Humperdinck)  I personally find this view repulsive, but that’s just me…
 
 Of course we all want to be happy.  But what happens then to the ideas of generosity, or sacrifice, or fidelity?  Yes, perhaps one could say that if I chose to be generous or self-sacrificing or faithful it is because that makes me “happy.”  But sometimes these behaviors are engaged in, even when one’s own happiness is not the final goal.  Look no further than to Jesus on the Cross.  
 
 Advent is our time of waiting for the memorial of the birth of our salvation.  Our Lord did not come to please Himself: “For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written…” (Romans 15:3).  Sometimes we may choose to suffer to save a loved one from suffering.   Sometimes we “answer the call” to serve:  no one who died in the two world wars was willing to do so because that would make the person “happy.”  The call of the Gospel is “renounce yourself and take up your cross; in the Kingdom you will be truly and perfectly happy.”  Instead of happiness being based on “me,” let’s base it instead on “we.”     
                                        -Fr. David