Everything Is Never EnoughSample

IS HAPPINESS EVEN POSSIBLE?

Does it feel like you should be happy, you want to be happy, and you try to be happy, but you’re not? One way to be unhappy is to lack what you most want. An­other is to get all you could possibly want and discover that everything is never enough.

The biblical book of Ecclesiastes is an ancient work of philosophy written by someone who relent­lessly sought to experience everything that could possibly lead to lasting happiness. Its primary author is identified not by name but by title, “Qohelet.” (Pronounced like “Go yell it.”)

Qohelet saw it all, got it all, expe­rienced it all, and in the end found fault with it all. Qohelet says, “I applied my heart to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven…. I have seen everything that is done under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:13, 14). Yet he discovered, “Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income” (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Later he reiterates, “I turned my heart to know and to search out and to seek wisdom and the scheme of things, and to know the wickedness of folly and the foolishness that is madness” (Ecclesiastes 7:25).

One of happiness’s many paradoxes is that you don’t get happy by aiming at happiness but by lead­ing a life worth living. So the question “How can I be happy?” opens a deeper question: “What makes life worth living?”

Qohelet commends enjoying what you have while you have it rather than trying to control it. You can’t hoard good gifts until a future day of enjoyment finally arrives. Equally crucial to enjoying these goods is recognizing that they are gifts in a literal, not metaphorical, sense. God gives all the gifts that lighten life’s days. Because life is a gift, receiving with thanks is more basic to enjoying life than earn­ing, and more decisive to finding happiness than achieving.

Qohelet’s practi­cal philosophy of the good life accounts for what your peak moments have in common with small joys. From spectacular to subtle, every good gift brings joy because it bears the fingerprints of joy himself.

God, you are the giver of every good gift and the source of true joy. May my life be lived not in pursuit of fleeting pleasures, but in pursuit of you. Amen.