The happy-life factor

January is the month when we ring in a new year with the hope that it will be both happy and prosperous. After the unusual challenges of 2020, our greeting might belie an underlying skepticism, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic that dogged us much of this past year remains with us at the turning of the calendar. We do wish for happier times.

Everyone seeks happiness. The eminent 18th-century English writer Samuel Johnson said that “to be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition.” The pursuit of happiness is so fundamental to our humanity that it is among the three “inalienable rights” mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

Trouble is, happiness seems to be an elusive goal — perhaps because too many look for it in all the wrong places.

The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle reflected considerably on the meaning of happiness. He said happiness is achievable through virtuous activity. “Living well consists in doing something, not just being in a certain state or condition,” says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy in elaborating on Aristotle’s view. “It consists in those lifelong activities that actualize the virtues of the rational part of the soul.”

Aristotle was a pagan who did not believe in an afterlife per se, except perhaps that one’s intellect can live on in a new body. But in the 13th century, St. Thomas Aquinas took Aristotle’s reflections further by defining two types of happiness. Man seeks perfect happiness, the ultimate pleasure of an everlasting joy whereby every human desire is satisfied and every sorrow or worry is eliminated. That, however, is only possible through perfect knowledge of God, which is only possible by the beatific vision of God achieved by a fully purified soul in heaven. On the other hand, we can attain a kind of “imperfect happiness” here on earth if, as Aristotle concluded, we lead virtuous lives.

When Christ was asked how one might attain eternal life, He pointed to the commandments, the beatitudes, and to the love of God and neighbor. He also called for the pursuit of holiness through virtue. “You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” He urged (Matt 5:48).

It follows, then, that if heaven is perfect or complete happiness, and the surest pathway to heaven boils down to Christian discipleship and seeking holiness by way of living the Christian virtues, then building and living personal virtue is our means to achieving the imperfect happiness we can achieve on earth.

A blueprint for happiness

In a new book titled The Willpower Advantage: Building Habits for Lasting Happiness, co-authors Tom Peterson and Ryan Hanning explain the true secret and pathway to true happiness. And it all comes down to committing our will to seeking and doing good — in other words, living virtuously.

Peterson, an Atlanta Legate who served as vice chairman of the Legatus international board of governors, and Hanning, professor of Church history and Catholic studies at the University of Mary, recommend that happiness seekers begin by taking an honest “spiritual audit” to determine their strengths, weaknesses, and temperament — and then resolve to develop a “good will,” one that “seeks what is good, beautiful, and true — and not just for oneself but for everyone. A good will wants what God wants,” they write.

That links us back to Aristotle and his stress on “virtuous activity”: happiness comes from willing and doing what is good.

“God’s grace and our cooperative diligence can work in unison to bring more blessings into our lives and the world around us,” write the authors. “But first we must align our will with God’s perfect will for us, so that we can respond in love and truth to our own personal challenges, and those of the human family.”  

The Willpower Advantage discusses each of 20 core virtues, their associated virtues and vices, and how individuals with each of the four main temperaments can grow in these virtues. The authors close with an action plan for each temperament: choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic.

Striving to build virtue and live virtuously does not automatically put us on a straight-line, straightup trajectory to eternal life, however. We can and will fail at times. Peterson and Hanning stress the need for perseverance in the task. The mercy and grace of God, available to us through the sacraments of Penance and the Eucharist, are there to heal us, strengthen us, and set us back on that path to greater holiness.

“Christians, we have forgotten our heritage” as children of our creator God who loves, sanctifies, and redeems us, write Peterson and Hanning. “Now is the time to reclaim it so that we can grow into Christ by building the virtues, the good habits, that lead to true happiness.”

The pandemic may accompany us for awhile into 2021, and the year additionally will bring its own share of challenges, troubles, sorrows, and disappointments. But we can still grow in that earthly happiness we seek, if only we listen to Aristotle and Aquinas – and resolve to live virtuously.

GERALD KORSON, editorial consultant for Legatus magazine, is based in Indiana.