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The Fundamental Rules of Happiness
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Thursday, 12 July 2007 |
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The fundamental Rules of Happiness
The fundamental Rules of Happiness
So much for pure theory. We may now consider in what ways it can be applied to our individual lives. We have just made it clear that true happiness is a happiness of growth and, as such, it awaits us in a quarter characterized by:
1 . Unification of self within our own selves;
2. Union of our own being with other beings who are our equals;
3. Subordination of our own life to a life which is greater than ours.
What consequences do these definitions entail for our day-to-day conduct? And what practical action should we take in order to be happy?
I can, of course, satisfy your curiosity and assist your good will by only the most general indications; for it is here that, quite rightly, we come up against any number of problems of taste, accident, and tem perament. Life becomes established and progresses in nature and structure only by reason of the very great variety of its elements. Each one of us sees the world and makes his approach to it from a particular angle, backed by a reserve of vital energy, with its own peculiarities that cannot be shared by others. (We may note, incidentally, that it is this comple mentary diversity which underlies the biological value of "personality/') Each one of us, therefore, is the only person who can ultimately discover for himself the attitude, the approach (which nobody else can imitate), that will make him cohere to the utmost possible degree with the surrounding uni verse as it continues its progress; that cohesion being, in fact, a state of peace which brings happiness.
Bearing these reservations in mind, we can, following our earlier lines of thought, draw up the following three rules of happiness.
I. If we are to be happy, we must first react against our tendency to follow the line of least re sistance, a tendency that causes us either to remain as we are, or to look primarily to activities external to ourselves for what will provide new impetus to our lives. We must, it is true, sink our roots deep into the rich, tangible, material realities which sur round us; but in the end it is by working to achieve our own inner perfection intellectual, artistic,
moral that we shall find happiness. The most I'm portant thing in life, Nansen used to say, is to find oneself. Through and beyond matter, spirit is hard at work, building. Centration.
2. If we are to be happy we must, second, react against the selfishness that causes us either to close in on ourselves, or to force our domination upon others. There is a way of loving a bad and sterile way by which we try to possess rather than to give ourselves. Here again, in the case of the couple or the group, we meet that same law of maximum effort which governed the progress of our interior development. The only love that brings true happi ness is that which is expressed in a spiritual progress effected in common. Decentration.
3. And if we are to be happy completely happy we must, third, in one way or another, directly or through some medium that gradually reaches out further afield (a line of research, a venture, an idea, perhaps, or a cause), transfer the ultimate interest of our lives to the advancement and success of the world we live in. If we are to reach the zone where the great permanent sources of joy are to be found, we must be like the Curies, like Termier and Nan- sen, like the first aviators and all the pioneers I spoke of earlier: we must re-polarize our lives upon one greater than ourselves. Do not be afraid that this means that if we are to be happy we must per form some remarkable feat or do something quite out of the ordinary. We have only to do what any one of us is capable of become conscious of our living solidarity with one great Thing, and then do the smallest thing in a great way. We must add one stitch, no matter how small it be, to the magnificent tapestry of life; we must discern the Immense which is building up and whose magnetic pull is exerted at the very heart of our own humblest activities and at their term; we must discern it and cling to it when all is said and done, that is the great secret of happiness. As one of the most acute, and most materialist, thinkers of modern England, Bertrand Russell, has put it: it is in a deep and instinctive union with the whole current of life that the greatest of all joys is to be found. Super-centration.
There you have the real core of what I have to say to you; but, having reached that point, there is one more thing that I owe it to you and to myself to say, if I am to be absolutely truthful.
I was recently reading a curious book [The Anat omy of Frustration ], in which the English novelist and thinker H. G. Wells writes about the original views recorded earlier by an American biologist and busi nessman, William Burrough Steele, that bear pre cisely on the point we are now considering, human happiness. Steele tries, with much good sense and cogency, to show (just as I have been doing) that since happiness cannot be dissociated from some notion of immortality, man cannot hope to be fully happy unless he sinks his own interests and hopes in those of the world, and more particularly in those of mankind. He adds, however, that, put in those terms, the solution is still incomplete; for if we are to be able to make a complete gift of self we must be able to love. And how can one love a collective, impersonal reality a reality that in some respects must seem monstrous such as the world, or even mankind?
The objection which Steele found when he looked deeper, and to which he gave no answer, is terribly and cruelly to the point. My treatment of the subject would, therefore, be both incomplete and disingenuous if I did not point out to you that the undeniable movement which, as we can see, is leading the mass of mankind to place itself at the service of progress is not " self-sufficient": if this terrestrial drive which I am asking you to share is to be sustained, it must be harmonized and synthe sized with the Christian drive.
We can look around and note how the mysticism of research and the social mysticisms are advancing, with admirable faith, towards the conquest of the future. Yet no clearly defined summit, and, what is more serious, no lot able object is there for them to worship. That is the basic reason why the enthusi asm and the devotion they arouse are hard, arid, cold, and sad: to an observer they can only be a cause for anxiety, and to those who aspire to them they can bring only an incomplete happiness.
At the same time, parallel with these human mys ticisms, and until now only marginal to them, there is Christian mysticism; and for the last two thousand years this has constantly been developing more pro foundly (though few realize this) its view of a per sonal God: a God who not only creates but animates and gives totality to a universe which he gathers to himself by means of all those forces which we group together under the name of evolution. Under the persistent pressure of Christian thought, the infi nitely distressing vasmess of the world is gradually converging upwards, to the point where it is transfi gured into a focus of loving energy.
Surely, then, we cannot fail to see that these two powerful currents between which the force of man's religious energies is divided the current of human progress, and the current of all-embracing charity need but one thing, to run together, and complete one another.
Suppose, first, that the youthful surge of human aspirations, fantastically reinforced by our new con cepts of time and space, of matter and life, should make its way into the lifestream of Christianity, en riching and invigorating it; and suppose at the same time, too, that the wholly modern figure of a univer sal Christ, such as is even now being developed by Christian consciousness, should stand, should burst into sight, should spread its radiance, at the peak of our dreams of progress, and so give them precision, humanize, and personalize them. Would not this be an answer, or rather the complete answer, to the difficulties before which our action hesitates?
Unless it receives a new blood transfusion from matter, Christian spirituality may well lose its vigor and become lost in the clouds. And, even more certainly, unless man's sense of progress receives an infusion from some principle of universal love, it may well turn away with horror from the terrifying cosmic machine in which it finds itself involved.
If we join the head to the body the base to the peak then, suddenly, there comes a surge of plenitude.
To tell you the truth, I see the complete solution to the problem of happiness in the direction of a Christian humanism: or, if you prefer the phrase, in the direction of a super-human Christianity within which every man will one day understand that, at all times and in all circumstances, it is possible for him not only to serve (for serving is not enough) but to cherish in all things (the most forbidding and tedi ous, no less than the loveliest and most attractive) a universe which, in its evolution, is charged with love.
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