Are our happiness goals ambitious enough?

Whether clutching contentment or ruing a lack of it, it’s helpful to know that there’s a higher, more secure happiness available. The human quest for happiness often remains on the level of seeking experiences or possessions that may or may not be attained, and if attained, are vulnerable to changing conditions. Many of these things are wholesome and legitimate aspirations, such as home, companionship, and career. But above and beyond these, and able to help form the shape they take in our experience, is a more spiritual happiness that we can both aspire to and attain. It’s one that’s inherent in a timeless truth we can grasp and demonstrate: God is real and good, and our life is actually spiritual, drawn solely from this divine source of all goodness.

Here’s a description of this God-sourced happiness from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by the Discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy: “Happiness is spiritual, born of Truth and Love” (p. 57)—that is, born of God, divine Spirit, since, as the Bible says, God is Truth and Love.

This understanding of God’s nature defines our nature, since we are each the spiritual expression of God. So, we include qualities born of Truth, such as honesty and integrity, and of Love, such as compassion and forgiveness. If such qualities are key to our happiness, this indicates that a higher happiness is one that reaches beyond a personal sense of well-being to a genuine desire to benefit others. The sentence from Science and Health following the earlier description affirms this selfless nature of true happiness and highlights its scope: “It is unselfish; therefore it cannot exist alone, but requires all mankind to share it.” Now that’s ambitious!