Miriam Rodero: The Pursuit of Happiness

Everybody wants to be happy. I know, it sounds silly. Why wouldn’t we want to be happy? In fact, happiness should be our ultimate goal – the one thing we should continuously be aspiring towards. Achieving happiness means we have succeeded as a human being; that we have done it right. Whichever paths we choose in life, whichever choices we make, they should all be geared towards that big, warm, fuzzy destination: happiness. Or so society incessantly tells us.

We are not only continuously told we should be happy, but also how to be happy. Shelves in bookshops are lined with self-help books providing fail-safe advice on how to reach happiness. We are bombarded on a daily basis with publicity telling us to buy this and that in order to be happy. “WikiHow” even has a 12 step programme on “How to Be Happy”. Buying those shoes, losing weight, getting that job…they are all means to an end. And that end is happiness.

By depicting happiness as the supreme aim, society suggests that it’s not okay to ever feel unhappy; that unhappiness means we have failed; that somewhere along the desired path towards happiness, we have taken a wrong turn. Maybe this is a root cause of the stigma attached to mental health problems – we live in a world where we find ourselves unable to talk about anxiety and depression because such issues indicate a failure to accomplish happiness, and in one way or another, it is our own fault.

But the big secret is – believe it or not – that happiness is not a destination. I know it sounds clichéd. But the truth is that happiness is just a feeling; an emotion. It’s like feeling angry, or disappointed, or bored. All of these are transitory, fleeting sensations and it’s time we recognised that happiness is too. Of course, we should strive to feel as positive as we can, as often as we can. But we have to stop thinking of happiness as a special haven we should one day arrive at, where we are eternally protected from any unhappiness which may befall us.

Because the thing is, and nobody ever dares say it out loud, it’s okay not to be happy all the time. What’s more, it’s impossible to be happy all the time. Life has bad moments and life has good moments and it is precisely because of this that we do, and should, feel a range of emotions. That’s how we grow; that’s how we learn to value and appreciate the things that truly matter to us.

It’s not about pursuing happiness. It’s not about trying to reach happiness. It’s about doing the things in life which make us happy, and if possible, identifying and cutting out the things which make us unhappy. The best we can do is strive towards an existence where we stop trying to control the things that go wrong and accept that sometimes they just do. And that’s not doing it wrong. That’s just life.