Growing in "Happierness"

Pilgrimage of Pain

"Happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy. Getting happier is the goal…  The goal is happierness. ...to get happierness, you need unhappiness in your life.”  Arthur Brooks

In my favorite podcast episode of 2023, Tim Ferriss and Arthur Brooks discussed the role of unhappiness in living a full life.

Here's the key part of the conversation:

Arthur Brooks: “One of the biggest mistakes that people make… is that people say, “I want to be happy, but…” And then they talk about some source of unhappiness in their life that they think blocks their happiness. And that’s the wrong way of thinking because you can get happier even if you’re unhappy, absolutely 100 percent all day long, because these are existing in different parts of your brain, number one. But number two, happiness is not the goal and unhappiness is not the enemy.

Getting happier is the goal… The goal is happierness.

That’s really what we’re going for is happierness. And to get happierness, you need unhappiness in your life.”

Chronic pain sucks, there’s no getting around that. I’ve spent years letting the unhappiness of chronic pain consume my life, hoping—praying that if only my pain would go away, then I could be happy. 

Being told at 15 years old that I’d likely spend the rest of my life in extreme back pain was devastating. Pain took over my life, and with it came a tsunami of unhappiness. 

For years, I believed happiness was unattainable amidst my suffering.

I thought my pain was a total barrier to happiness. It was a zero-sum game. Happiness was a distant, unreachable shore, and I was treading water, barely able to stay afloat, weighed down by pain and despair.

Arthur Brooks’ concept of “happierness” (which is actually Oprah’s idea from the book they recently wrote together called Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier) has been transformative for me. The goal isn’t to be 100% happy 100% of the time. That’s impossible. The goal is to be aware of your mixed levels of happiness and unhappiness, and to use your unhappiness to slowly grow in happiness. 

The goal is happierness.

But why do we need unhappiness to achieve happierness? Arthur explains:

“Look, you need negative emotions to keep you alive, but you also need the deferral of gratification to get your satisfaction. And you need to understand the nature of the frustration that comes such that you can start to manage your wants. You need serious, full-on suffering to find the answers to the questions of meaning

Carl Jung said that you don’t really understand happiness until you’ve experienced unhappiness because of the contrast.

Suffering is what helps you understand what you’re made of and what you can bear. And only then will you find the answers to the “Why am I alive?” or “For what I’d be willing to die?” questions. You don’t find the meaning questions, the answers at that week at the beach in Ibiza. You find it in the depths when somebody you love dies, when you’re afraid of what your future holds, when you feel hopeless. That’s when those moments become real, and that suffering turns out to be an integral part in your journey to happiness.“

We need the unhappiness that comes with suffering to grow in happiness. 

Rather than seeing suffering and unhappiness as the enemy, we need to see it as a catalyst for profound personal and spiritual growth. By entering into the depths of our suffering, accepting it, and funding purpose in it, we add meaning to our life. 

As Tim Ferriss said in the same podcast, “The greater the potency of the meaning, the less the suffering incapacitates you.” 

Meaning is the secret to happierness.

If we wallow away in our suffering and refuse to find meaning in it, we waste an opportunity to grow. We waste our suffering! 

Finding meaning in suffering isn’t a fun process; no one can do it for you. It takes tremendous courage to enter into the depths of our souls, to sift past the physical and emotional pain, and to find what’s underneath. 

“The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life.” -Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Seventeen years into my Pilgrimage of Pain, I’m still trying to find meaning in my suffering. I tend only to catch glimpses, but I hold on to them when I do. I don’t think we’ll ever get a clear picture of the purpose of our suffering in this life.

Here’s what I know:

I know that I wouldn’t be the man I am today without my chronic pain. 

I wouldn’t be as empathetic. I wouldn’t be as brave. I wouldn’t be as strong. 

The most important part of my life, my Catholic faith, entered into my life because of my quest for answers to questions about pain and suffering. My conversation to Catholicism fundamentally transformed my life and gave it true meaning. 

I believe that because of my chronic pain, I am happier – not in spite of it, but because of the meaning I’ve found within it.

Meaning is the secret to happierness. 

Let’s embrace our Pilgrimage of Pain, not as a path of despair, but as a journey towards happierness.

Challenge: As we walk together on this pilgrimage, take some time this week to contemplate how previous unhappiness has led to discovering greater meaning in your life. Has this caused a net growth in happiness over time?