The Pursuit of Happiness

I've had time to write this weekend, and I really wanted to do so.  To my consternation, nothing would come, and that almost never happens. On Friday, I'd been taking medication for pain associated with a toothache, and I couldn't focus. I watched a couple of movies, attempted to read, and had lunch with someone with whom I'd been "matched."  (It wasn't.)

This morning I went to church a little early.  Often when I sit and reflect, something will come.  It didn't.  When I got on the train to come home, a religious leaflet from the Church of Scientology was on the seat beside me.  In large letters with a blue background was a quote from the Church's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, "No man is happy without a goal, and no man can be happy without faith in his own ability to reach that goal."

In that instant, I knew what I'd write.  One of the movies I'd watched was "Hector and His Search for Happiness." The movie is based on a book by the same name  by Francois Lelord, about a man who's pretty much achieved his goals, but knows he isn't happy.  British psychiatrist Hector takes off on a months-long journey of Asia, Africa, and America to find out what makes people happy.

During the course of his journey, he comes up with 23 rules or principles for happiness.  However, the line that sticks in my mind comes from a lecture Hector attends on the Pursuit of Happiness. The happiness lecturer says something like, "It is not the pursuit of happiness that counts but the happiness you find in pursuit." Although Hector finds 23 guidelines for happiness, it is clear that most boil down to being present and finding happiness in the possibility of the moment, whatever is occurring.  At the end of the movie, we see Hector back with the same home, office, and partner just being delighted at the same life through which he used to move mindlessly.

In the 1990s when I coached primarily physicians and C-Suite executives, most of whom had achieved all their goals, I found that neither the goals nor the pursuit of them brought happiness, peace, or joy.  In fact, one said to me, "As soon as I set a goal, I know I will achieve it.  Even the pursuit has lost it's joy."

With all due respect to any Scientologist readers, I am pretty confident that Hubbard was wrong.  Hector, the lecturer in the film, my clients, and my own life bring me back to a common theme in this blog: being present and finding joy in whatever is occurring is the path to happiness.