As I begin writing this column, continuing St. Thomas’ thoughts on happiness from the previous column, I am looking out a window and seeing life gone dormant. Skies are cloudy. It is cold out. Yes, it is winter, and I guess I can be thankful that I have had no snow to shovel … yet. COVID is rampaging throughout the world again. Few reasons to “be happy”?
Let’s address misconceptions of happiness.
St. Thomas demonstrates in a number of questions that concepts we might consider “sources of happiness” are not. Wealth, honors, fame, power, perfect health and pleasure are either means to a temporary or erroneous idea of happiness – what we might call temporary satisfaction – or they exist outside of ourselves.
Contrary to the message of society today, perfect happiness can’t be had in this life. This shouldn’t surprise us or cause despair. St. Thomas would say we can be only imperfectly happy as we are drawn to God.
Yes, even “happily” married couples should view their lives together as being imperfectly happy because marriage is not the final end. But, never fear, St. Thomas does have something to say on happiness in life while being drawn to God.
For St. Thomas, virtue in our vocation is the path to happiness. Why? Because our final end, our predestined end, is union with God at the end of our lives. All that occurs between birth and death, if properly directed and conducted in a virtuous manner, will make us as happy as we can possibly be this side of heaven.
We must think about what true happiness is and then acquire the virtues necessary to live in such a way as to obtain it. For St. Thomas, this is the core of the branch of human knowledge and action that we call morality.
Most people today think that morality is about rules to obey – things to do or not do, even though we might want to do it. For St. Thomas, morality is about figuring out what will make us truly happy in a deep and lasting way, by attaining what is truly good for us and arranging our lives so that we move toward that goal. Morality is therefore about seeking and obtaining what is good for us, what leads us to our flourishing and success in the deepest sense of those words.
Let’s stop there for a second. Happiness is not so much a feeling or an emotion, nor is it something that just happens to us. St. Thomas argues that it is a state or, even better, the activity of living a human life well, by which we attain what is truly good for us.
We must have an idea of what is truly good for us. We are all called for a “purposeful something” in God’s plan. God then equips us naturally (in the physical and spiritual sense), add in temporally (when you are born) and spatially (where you are born) and sometimes supernaturally to accomplish His desire.
Our lives have a secular (societal) aspect and a spiritual aspect. It is when we are in sync with God in these aspects that are we leading happy lives.
When someone says, “You can be anything you want to be,” that’s going to be more conceptual than actual. Many people might want to be the next LeBron James, Albert Einstein or St. Thomas Aquinas, which is fine; we should have role models. But that is what they are, role models. God breaks the mold when He creates you and everybody else as He lays out a path for you.
Back to St. Thomas, morality and happiness. Virtues are an extremely important part of this picture. They’re an important part of our moral development because they make it possible to move toward our true good and act well in its pursuit, with ease and freedom. (Ease and freedom being the sense of natural or uninhibited as opposed to a lack of physical or mental effort.)
Next time we’ll further explore the path of happiness, which is a road we all can share.