Happiness is not found in the present moment, or in the journey, or in succeeding.

1. “The secret to having it all, is believing you already do.”  Be happy now, because it is all you have.  You cannot change the past, you cannot control the future. You can only experience what is happening now, so enjoy it.  Be in the present moment.  Sadness comes from reliving our past shame and guilt, and from fearing the future.  Happiness is now. 

2. “Find Joy in the journey.”  Work toward your goals.  Work to make life better.  Strive, progress, move.  Have a goal in mind of how healthy you want to be, how much money you want to make, what job you want, where you want to live, etc, and go for it.  But don’t wait till you have those things to be happy – enjoy the journey.  Enjoy getting in shape.  Enjoy your daily exercise.  Enjoy working hard and learning and going to school, and slowly and surely working toward your goals.  If you reach them, great, but the joy is in the journey, not in the arrival.
 

3. It isn’t about starting a project – but finishing it.  If you never finish school, never get the job, never get married and have the family, never buy the car, never finish the project – then what do you have? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
Happiness is in finishing.  Achieving.  Earning the prize, winning the game, getting the trophy.  Happiness is never quitting. It is getting the life you want - having the stable job with good insurance and paid vacation.  Happiness is getting it done.

Those who win, achieve, and succeed will often mock those finding joy in the journey because “they’re only doing that to console themselves for not getting what they really wanted.  2^nd place has to find an excuse to be happy.”

Those enjoying the journey say that the ones focused on winning are shallow and self-centered.  They can’t appreciate teamwork unless it results in a Championship ring.  Joy is found in the doing.  Joy is found in moving the right direction, no matter if you get there or not.

Those who enjoy the present moment would say the others are enjoying the present moment, just not very often.   They enjoy it when they’re winning, and hate the present moment when they’re losing.  Those enjoying the journey will only be happy when they are moving forward, but can’t handle stillness, they’ll call it stagnation.  They may handle failure better than the “winners” but they are set up to be unhappy because they still seek it externally, not from within.

I think the answer is not #1 or #2 or #3. 
 

Happiness is not “or,” it’s “and.”

Life is not about one thing OR the other.  It is about accepting the seeming contradiction of AND.  Enjoy life right now, no matter what is happening, AND enjoy improving, getting better, becoming something more, AND enjoy succeeding and reaching goals and achieving.

Once you see that these 3 are not mutually exclusive but meant to all be used in concert, in a synergistic relationship - then you can be happy now, AND enjoy working toward your goals, AND enjoy reaching them.

Everything that happens is God’s will – because nothing is.

What is God’s purpose?  His mission?  His goal? 

I think it’s to see His children succeed; to see us learn and grow and progress and eventually become like Him.  He wants us to be happy.  Not short term, momentary, fleeting fun happy – but eternal, all encompassing, essence of our being, happy.

There is only one way that can happen: free will.

We have to be able to choose. Everything.  We have to be able to make right and wrong choices, we have to be able to save a life, and also take a life.  We have to be able to love and hate, help and hurt, give and take.  We have to be free to make every single mistake, every wrong choice, because that is the only way we’ll ever learn to make the right choice.

God is all powerful, all knowing.  He can make anything happen at anytime.  He understands, perfectly, every law of physics, every reaction of chemistry - he can do anything, for he understands everything, and has all power.

So why doesn't he stop the rapists, the murderers, the kidnappers, the thieves, the drunk drivers, the suicidal friends?

Why doesn't he STOP bad things from happening?

Because our eternal happiness is far too important.  We MUST have free-will.  We MUST have agency.  Without that - there really is no point, no purpose, no progression, no happiness.

God answers prayers.  He can make a flood or a famine.  He can call a prophet and send down scripture.  God does a million other things to help us, persuade us, guide us, and teach us.  He chooses NOT to control us.

For God's will to happen in our lives, we have to CHOOSE to do His will.

Christ was the perfect example of this.  He is the only person that chose, his entire life, to do God's will, in every single decision.

Christ's life was perfect because he used his agency not to do his will, but the Fathers.  This did not keep everyone else from choosing their own will.  Others still chose to hate him, and revile him, and arrest him, and beat him, and eventually kill him.  Christ chose to do the Father's will, and let those men kill him.  Christ had his agency, and willingly gave it to God. 

Now there's us.  In our lives you can look at it both ways, and both are correct.

1. Everything that happens is God's will.  (True, because His will is that we choose)
2. Nothing that happens is God's will. (True, because it is all our will, which is exactly how He wants it.)

Why Les Miserables Matters

Les Miserables is about belief, faith, and conversion.  It is about moments of Crisis that test us and try us.

Do you live what you profess?  What would it take to change your mind?  Can people change?  What is worth living for?  What is worth dying for?

These are the themes of Les Miserables.  Each main character must face a moment when their view on life, their professed reason for happiness, is challenged.

THE BISHOP:

The story begins with an old Bishop.  He gives up the large church to make it a hospital, and moves his alter and house into the old small hospital.  He helps the poor, the needy, and never keeps anything nice or expensive for himself, except a nice set of silver dinnerware. 

Along comes a poor convict – fresh out of prison.  The Bishop gives the man dinner on his silver, lets him sleep on a feather bed, and calls him “brother.”
The convict steals all the silverware from the cupboard.  He runs away in the night and is caught by the gendarmes and brought back to the Bishop. 

The bishop has always professed to be a forgiving man of God.  He lives a poor simple life, but has somehow kept this silver all along.  Will he still be forgiving to a man that betrayed his trust and mocked his hospitality?  Will he still keep his little guilty pleasure – the silver, or will he give it up, and forgive the convict?  Where does his happiness lie?  Is it in Justice or Mercy?

THE MOTHER:

She falls in love.  She is in the prime of her youth and can’t imagine a better life.  Then her wealthy boyfriend abandons her one day and she is left alone, pregnant, with no employment.  She passes a woman on the street who had two daughters of her own.  Those two little girls look happy and content.  Her daughter could possibly have a better life living with them for a time.  Will the mother give up her daughter to grant her the chance at a better life?

The mother attains work, but is eventually cast out because she has a child and no husband.  She can’t find any good work and must decide between her pride and dignity, and supporting her daughter financially.  Will she sell her locket, her hair, her teeth, her virtue?  What can she sacrifice for the love of her daughter?  Where does her happiness lie?  Is it in her own life, or her daughters?

THE REVOLUTIONARY:

His father left when he was young, and never returned.  His Grandfather is rich and wants to dictate how his grandson lives his life.  Will this young man live a rich privileged life that he is entitled to?  While he live poor?  When he finds out his father was a good honest man, will he follow his footsteps? 

The revolutionary believes in the people of France.  He believes in the cause of freedom.  His life is dedicated to the revolution.  Then he falls in love - completely and absolutely head-over-heels in love.  His love is leaving, going away to England forever.  Will he follow her and find happiness in a life of love and happiness?  Will he stay and fight at the barricades in the cause of freedom?

The revolutionary knows his father’s life was saved by a man named Thernardier.  He swears to his father to help this “Thernardier” if they ever meet.  He swears to help him anyway he can.  When they do meet, Thernardier is a the worst and most vile of men.  The revolutionary watches as his girlfriend and her father are threatened, kidnapped, and held hostage by Thernardier.

Should the Revolutionary save his girlfriend, or the man he swore to serve and protect?  Is his happiness in love, or in honor?

THE OTHER WOMAN:

(this story line is only in the musical, not in the book)

She loves a young man.  He is handsome; he is brave; he is rich but lives like he’s poor.; and… he is in love with someone else. 

She would be his at any moment if he asked, but he sees them as “just friends.”  He asks her to help him court his love.  He asks her to find her, find her address, take him to her, deliver her love notes.

Where does the happiness of ”the other woman” lie?  Is it in being with him, or in making him happy by helping him be with another?

When he breaks her heart over and over again, should she still defend and help him?  When his life is in danger, will she sacrifice her life for his, even though he is in love with someone else?

THE INSPECTOR:

Life is just.  You reap what you sow.  There are no hand-outs.  There are no gray areas.  There is hard work and honest living, and that’s the way to be happy. 
He is just in all things.  He gives people exactly what is required by law.  He has no need to pass judgment because that is for God and the courts.  He enforces.

Men are good, or men are bad.  They choose, and they keep their course.  He has seen it time and time again. 

When Javert wrongly accuses a man, he asks for demotion and reprimand.  He asks that justice be meted out on him as it is on everyone else.

What does he do when a convict, a man who broke his parole and is on the lam, appears to be good? The man helps others and lives a seemingly honest life.   How can this be?

When a man he has hunted, chased, and found has a chance to kill the inspector, the convict instead lets him live.  He lets him go.

When the convict should be running for his life, he stops to help an injured young man, to carry him to safety.

The convict never asks for help for himself, only to be allowed to help others.  He needs an hour, a day, a short time to finish helping someone else, then he’ll turn himself in.  Can he be believed?

The Inspector must decide: Is happiness found in never breaking a single rule?  Is it found in justice?  Is there room for mercy, and if so, how can he reconcile that in his mind? 

THE CONVICT:

He is the main character of the story.  He has many of these moments of Crisis.  When he is shown kindness and love, will he steal and be who he has become in Prison?  Will he steal the silver from the Bishop?
When he is forgiven and given a new lease on life – will he change, will he become a better man?

When another man is accused in his place.  When the convict could have someone else jailed in his place, will he let it happen and live a free man, or will he confess to save this stranger from a lifetime in Prison?

When the convict sees a prostitute being abused and mis-accused, while he stand up for her? 

When he is asked to care for a little child, what will he do for her? 

When she grows up and has become all he cares about in the world, can he let her go when it is her time to move on, marry, and live her own life?

When he is given a chance to exact punishment and vengeance on the officer who had been chasing him his entire adult life, will he take it.? When the officer has done “wrong” and the convict has ”the right” to kill him, will he?

When the convict realizes he is a liability to his daughter, will he exit her life for good, for her good?

This story speaks to us.  It speaks to the very core of why we live.  What makes us happy?  What makes life worth living, and death worth dying?  What is the ultimate goal?  Where is the line between right and wrong, good and bad, justice and mercy?

This is about conversion – do we really believe that which we profess?  When it’s all on the line, who are we?

Who Am I?

(If you want to read an abridged version of the book - here's my version)

Three Degrees of Happiness

How many books and articles have been written about "happiness?"

The very declaration of our nation's independence says that our Creator endowed us with "certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Many people view happiness as the goal and purpose of life.  In my work I see hundreds of patients who are seeking it.  Some through family, others through friends, and others in a joint or bottle.  Some think a pill will grant it, others are certain that money is the key.

Personally, I have found three degrees of happiness.  There are three types, three sources, three keys to happiness.  They are pleasure, inner-peace, and eternal joy.

1. Pleasure: That which gives us momentary enjoyment.  

Pleasure can be both good and bad.  One can find pleasure in listening to a favorite song, eating a piece of chocolate, hearing a funny joke, or helping a friend.  It can be found in seeing someone "get what they deserve," or in a forbidden pleasure, in skipping school or breaking the rules or laws.  It can be found in alcohol, cocaine, heroin, LSD, marijuana, caffeine, or pure vanilla ice cream.  

Pleasure doesn't differentiate between right and wrong, short term or long term consequences. Pleasure is now. 

2. Inner Peace: Living according to our values.

Everyone has their own values, their own ideals.  Everyone has a vision of what they should be, how they should be different, what actions they should or shouldn't be doing.  These values may come from parents, friends, society, religion, or many other sources.  Many values include Family, Friendship, Work, Education, Recreation, Spirituality, Community, Health, the Environment, the Arts, etc...

Inner Peace comes from living according to your ideals.  It comes from having less regret and more fulfillments.  When your mind no longer argues between what you ARE doing and what you SHOULD be doing, that is inner peace. 

Most self help books are about these first two degrees of happiness.  They encourage pleasure as long as the means are in-line with your values.  They help people reach inner peace by eliminating internal conflict.

The problem is that not all values are good.  Criminal Gangs have values.  They may value gang loyalty to such a high degree that one would steal, kill, and serve time in prison to have the inner peace of being loyal and true to their word.  Many people can reach inner peace and still be a terror to society, to their families, their communities.  
Most any religion has its extremists: they are at complete inner peace as they engage in Crusades, terrorist bombings, lynchings, etc...

Inner peace is not the end goal.

3. Eternal Joy:  Living according to universal principles.

When our values match universal principles, then we can find true happiness; the joy that lasts and is independent of circumstance.

Principles are not practices and they are not specific to one religion or society.  They are universal. Everyone knows them and values them, though they interpret them differently 

Examples include: Fairness, Integrity, Honesty, Human Dignity, Service, Quality, Potential, and Patience.

I often think of the question: "Do I have happy moments, or a happy life?"

Happy moments are easy to come by, but they don't last.  In fact the more we do the same thing seeking the same level of pleasure, the more we'll be disappointed.  Whether it be thrills, or food, or drugs, or a new relationship - That momentary pleasure is usually best the first time.  Unless it also leads to inner peace or eternal joy, it will fade and we will move on to something else.

We can have inner peace and still have a miserable life, we simply won't care.  With inner peace we believe we are right and we will continue to think so because we are living by our values.  Other people's lives, opinions, or judgments don't matter because we have inner peace.  Many people consider this the ultimate goal. -It is the first step only.

Once we discover eternal and universal principles, then we can align our values with those principles. We can make goals according to those principles.  It won't always matter if we reach every goal or not. We may change our minds on goals or choose something new to work toward.  Since the principles never change, the change in goals won't matter because we've been moving in the right direction the entire time.

All three degrees of happiness are important, but the only way to enjoy pleasure without future regret is to make the pleasure match our values.  The only way to enjoy inner peace and building lasting happiness for ourselves and everyone around us is to make our values match universal principles.