Yizkor Yom Kippur 5769, 10.9.08
Are these three statements true or false?
¨ First: We would be happier if we made more money, found the perfect mate, lost 10 pounds or moved to a new house.
¨ Second: Happiness is genetic. We can’t change how happy we are any more than we can change how tall we are.
¨ And last: Success brings happiness.
It may be surprising but studies show all three of these statements are false.
Studies show that wealth does not bring happiness. People who win a large amount of money in a lottery, are no happier a year after they win than they were before. In fact, many of them are less happy, losing friends because they expected some of the money, ending marriages because of arguments about how to spend the money.
Another study tells us that only 50% of happiness is genetic. Forty percent is intentional and 10% is circumstantial. While we are not completely in charge of how happy we are, we have a lot of control over it.
And ironically success does not bring happiness, rather happiness brings success.
Happiness has become a subject of a lot of research lately. Between 1980 and 1985 only 2100 articles were written about happiness. In the last two years that number has grown to 27,000. We are a nation focused on, we could almost say obsessed with, being happy. We expect to receive all that we want, when we want it. We believe we deserve it and think it will bring us happiness.
The problem is that happiness is not really a goal. It’s a way of looking at the world; a way of approaching problems; of understanding human behavior.
Before going further, let’s define happiness. One researcher tells us that happiness is feeling a sense that our life is good, along with having positive emotions on a regular basis.
Another says we are happy when we are involved with activities that are engaging and meaningful. He says happiness is being so absorbed by what we’re doing that we lose track of time.
And still another says happiness is using what we are best at to serve others or to participate in a cause that's bigger than ourselves.
In other words having a purpose and meaning in our lives helps us feel fulfilled and happy.
One psychologist tells us that our purpose in life does not have to be grand and overwhelming. As teenagers, it can be getting into the college of our choice. As parents, it can be making sure our children are prepared for school each day. We do not have to find a cure for a disease to feel happy and fulfilled in our lives.
It’s also important to say what happiness isn’t. According to psychologists, it isn’t getting everything right in our lives. Once our basic needs are met, happiness lies not in how much we accumulate, but in the ways we live and look at the world.
It’s interesting to note that if our only goal is to achieve personal happiness, we will probably never achieve it. Happiness comes from doing something that we love. In fact, what I said at the beginning isn’t totally true. Money does indeed create happiness but only if we give it away. Studies show that the more generous people are, the happier they are.
In a recent book, Gross National Happiness: Why Happiness Matters for America -- and How We Can Get More of It, Albert C. Brooks, a professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University tells us that religious people are twice as likely to say they are happy than secular folks. Brooks defines religious people as those who actually practice their faith, not just those who are affiliated with a denomination or house of worship. Most religious people regardless of what faith they practice are more optimistic. He also tells us that religious people are more ethical than secular ones and give more money to charities.
Brooks points out that having meaning, purpose and value in their lives is a major reason for happiness among religious people and that they get all of those benefits from believing in God.
There is also a direct link between psychological well-being and good physical health. The sense of happiness and satisfaction are linked to positive effects on our neurological, endocrine and immune systems. Being happy actually makes us healthier.
So it seems really simple. Create a life in which you are doing the things you really love to do, be a religious person and give lots of money to charity. That will give you a happy life.
Well, not quite so fast!
We have Jude Acosta’s passionate plea to put aside our strong yearning for happiness and allow ourselves to feel the pain in our lives.
In her article in the American Thinker, Be Happy: The American Refusal to Deal with Suffering, this writer and clinical psychologist identifies three basic human desires: to be happy, healthy and wealthy. The problem she believes is that we want wealth without working or studying hard; good health without eating well, getting enough sleep or exercising regularly. And what she sees as the worst is that we want happiness, love and contentment without having to suffer or sacrifice.
She identifies the ‘loser’ mentality that Americans have adopted recently along with New Age theology. We allegedly create our own reality and so if we are unhappy, it’s because we make ourselves unhappy. Instead of being ‘losers’ and dwelling on the negative, we just have to get over it. If we are genuinely sad about something, we have a very limited time to deal with it and then we are expected to return immediately to happiness. ‘Put on your happy face’ is a phrase that is commonly heard.
A corollary to this New Age theology is that God is all good and would not put evil, read that as pain, in the earth. Because we are basically a religious country, that idea puts us in a deep bind when something painful happens to us. We have to either disavow God or disavow evil. Disavowing evil leaves us no room for suffering, for expressing necessary grief in our lives. The most important point Acosta wants to make is that if we do not let ourselves feel and express real pain, then we are sacrificing our connection to our soul.
The ability to love is one of the most profound causes of happiness in our lives. The only way to truly give ourselves completely to love is to be willing to feel the pain of loss if love ends or the person we love dies. When that happens, what is left is sadness, longing, disappointment, perhaps a sense of failure. Acosta believes that if we do not give ourselves the time to grief when we need it, we will eventually harden our hearts and lose touch with our deep and genuine humanity. We will live on the surface of our possibilities and potentials. She urges us to spend the time we need suffering, feeling pain and when we have truly finished with it, then moving on to happiness.
Let’s see what Judaism tells us about happiness and suffering.
We learn in the book of the prophet, Isaiah that God is the One who forms light, creates darkness; makes peace, and creates evil [45:7]. It was God Himself who put evil, again let’s call it pain, into our world and who expects us to react and respond to pain when we experience it. In fact the rabbis gave us a complete system to use when someone we loved has died. We learn from this that we do not avoid grieving at all. We have a set of times, a week, a month, a year in which to fully immerse ourselves in our grief and then we can come fully back to our lives and back to feeling happiness.
If we take one look at our ancestors, particularly the ones most connected with God, we learn that happiness was not a main part of their expectations or of their reality.
Abraham was given 10 tests by God to see if he was faithful, one of which was to sacrifice his most beloved son.
Isaac was tricked by his wife to give a blessing to Jacob and not his older brother Esau.
Jacob, for many years, lived in fear of being killed by his brother and was tricked by his father-in-law into marrying the wrong sister.
King David, devoted to God, was forced to hide from King Saul who was determined to kill him and then watched his children abuse and deceive him and each other.
Our Torah makes it clear that we should not expect an easy life. We do not need all the scientific studies and psychological understandings of happiness and suffering to tell us what our tradition already knows. Our lives have to be filled with meaning, purpose and a strong sense of ethical imperatives. And we can get those things from a strong connection to God and to our tradition.
The Dean of my rabbinic school, Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson consistently warned us that in order to be truly spiritually alive, truly satisfied with ourselves, we have to allow ourselves to face the darkness in our lives. We have to see ourselves as we really are and to heal whatever pains are in our past. We have to be willing to continue healing from any pain in our lives in the present as well. Unless we do that, he told us, we cannot really expect to understand anyone else’s pain and as rabbis, we cannot help others to heal.
We are about to recite the Yizkor prayers remembering our relatives who are no longer with us. But this grief that we feel, whether it is fresh and new or old and familiar, is not the only pain in our lives. There are many of us who sit here holding old pain that seems impossible to fully examine and feel. But I urge all of us to do just that. To pull out the old pain, a little at a time, to feel it, to allow it to be alive inside of us and then to let it go once it is fully processed. I think Jude Acosta is right when she says that if we don’t allow ourselves to suffer when we experience real pain, a part of our soul dies and does not come back to life until our pain is released.
Let us commit ourselves in this New Year, at this time of standing before God and vowing to become better people, to achieve the kind of happiness that can and must coexist with suffering, with the normal pain that comes with being truly and fully alive. Let us find our inspiration to release our pain from the stories of our ancestors and from our Jewish laws. Let us find it from our friends and family who can hold us literally and figuratively as we experience our pain. And let us find it from our connection to the Holy One, however we understand Him in our lives.
G’mar Hatimah Tova, May we all be signed and sealed in the book of life.