Would you describe yourself as perfectly happy? Perhaps you’d say you are somewhat happy or happy enough, but not especially so. We often get the general impression that lasting happiness is far-off, practically impossible, not to be hoped for in this life. And, when someone does describe himself as happy, we suspect him of being naive, like a Midwesterner just arrived in the big city; or unmotivated, like a high school dropout without the least bit of ambition.

When we are made to confront our own unhappiness, it can be distressing, especially when contrasted with the good life proposed in the Gospel. Time and again, we hear it preached: The Lord promises surpassing happiness to those who come after him. “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (Jn 10:10). And yet, very few people seem to enjoy this abundant life. Made suspicious by this apparent contradiction, many of us set aside the work of truly being happy, and instead content ourselves with simply being busy.

I think here of my first few years of religious formation. I joined the Dominican Province of Saint Joseph in the Eastern United States. After novitiate and profession of simple vows, we do our philosophical and theological formation in Washington, D.C., at the Dominican House of Studies. Though my time at the House was very good and formative, I found myself thinking of happiness as something that came only with solemn vows or ordination or first assignment. I could hope for happiness, but only at a later date. This thought informed my approach to life generally and studies especially.

In my province, it’s possible for a friar to shave a year or two off his initial studies, depending on what he did previously and how much work he’s willing to shoulder. When I got wind of this, I studied some things on my own, tried to arrange courses efficiently, and generally busied my thoughts with working quickly toward completing my degrees. I thought often and anxiously of expediting the process. And, I’m embarrassed to say, I adopted this mindset without much reflection at all.

At one point though, I was trying to figure out some scheduling problem, and I solicited the advice of another friar. Instead of encouraging me in my pursuit, he called into question my whole project. “Why do you want to rush through?” he asked. Confounded by his challenge, I stumbled in search of an answer: “So I can move on to the next thing and be of service to the people of God,” I ventured. Without hesitation, he rejoined, “What about this thing? Isn’t this meaningful? Isn’t this of great service to the people of God?”

Yikes. Such sense. I was shaken by the incisiveness of his rebuke. I suppose I had just never thought about it in those terms. I was so used to thinking about happiness as deferred satisfaction that I had neglected to think about the purpose and import of what happens now. I had failed to engage with the question of happiness as a present reality and, in the process, had just gotten really busy.

I do not think that my experience is an isolated one. Instead of seeking to be truly happy and arranging our lives accordingly, many of us have chosen to be busy. It’s become the default response in any conversation: “How are you?” “Busy!” “So busy!” “Crazy busy!” But, upon hearing this response for the umpteenth time in a day, the question that naturally arises is “Why?”

There are, indeed, some legitimately and inescapably busy people in the world; but there are also quite a few of us who just choose to be so, who fill our lives with activity of whatever sort. Kids play multiple sports a season, only to prove mediocre at all of them. Young professionals work long hours, amassing vacation time they’ll never use. Older folks find they are incapable of leisurely retirement and slowly accumulate diversions until their days are, once again, full.

Why is this the case? There are any number of reasons for why we overcommit. It could be that we want to be the person who does all the things (whether we are being magnanimous or proud). It might be that we’re very competent and figure someone else won’t do the job as well (whether we are being high-handed or sacrificial). Whatever the reason we give though, the source of our frenzied activity probably runs deeper. Many of us, I suspect, take on so much because we feel like we need to in order to justify our existence. Here we are, feeling a bit unfulfilled and lost. We had hoped that life would amount to more, but it hasn’t. With this recognition comes a sadness. It’s not so much depression as a kind of existential ache:

It’s 10:45 a.m., and I’ve already had my second thought of lunch. Am I hungry or just anxious?

I’m driving to work, and my phone inexplicably conks out; I can’t make calls, and I can’t listen to podcasts. Am I bored or just sad?

My friend cancels our evening plans, and I immediately seize the opportunity to catch up on house cleaning, chat with my brother, and watch a show. Am I efficient or just terrified of being alone?

In these moments, how often am I content to wait, to think, and to register the experience? How often do I simply refuse to do so? With the wordless intuition that my life might be a bit light on meaning, I find it far easier to engage in feverish activity rather than to sound the depths of my solitude. So I come to fill my days with busyness because I am afraid. By fragmenting my life — parceling it out among myriad tasks — I barely keep at bay the creeping suspicion that maybe none of this matters.

All of this running around distracts us from the truth of our lives. Alternately perturbed and paralyzed by our inability to do anything significant, we give up on being real protagonists in the drama of our existence. Instead, we become mere observers. This, at first, seems counterintuitive. You’d think that all our activity would have us feeling more engaged and more empowered. Instead, the opposite proves to be true. We often end up feeling trapped by overcommitment and prevented from taking on more meaningful tasks.

True enough, I finished all my work for the week, but it took most of Sunday afternoon and evening, and I haven’t picked up a good novel in three months.

Yes, I was happy to help with organizing the parish festival all weekend, but I didn’t carve out any prayer time for three days, and I just feel tired and sad.

Sure, I’m almost done fundraising for my mission trip, but I didn’t visit my grandmother in the hospital again this week, and I’ve been putting her off now for a while.

Rather than really taking hold of our life, it feels like things just sort of happen to us. We get swept along by other people, caught up by their stronger wills and whims. We can’t say no, and so we say yes, but under duress and with the secret hope that whatever it is gets canceled.

Looking out over this landscape, we may be tempted to believe that “real life is elsewhere.” Whatever this is before me, this is not real life. It is arbitrary. It is accident. My genuine self and my genuine experience lie somewhere on the other side of the present moment. These things here are to be gotten over, to be gotten under, to be gotten around. If I end up learning something, it will be in spite of them, not from them. The devil may be in the details, but God surely isn’t.

To make matters worse, this attitude of escape is often paired with a kind of magical thinking about the future. “Sure, things may be rather bleak now, but in days to come it will look different.” “Once I graduate, then I can kick the drinking habit.” “Once I secure a promotion, then I can get myself on better financial footing.” “Once I hit thirty, then my spiritual life will take off.” “Once I get married, then I’ll be happy.”

Think about how this dynamic might play out in the life of an ambitious high school student. At the beginning of her freshman year, she has all kinds of activities to choose from. She may feel motivated to contribute or determined to build her resume; maybe she just feels pressured by friends. Regardless of the reasons, she signs up for sports, orchestra, student government, quiz bowl, French club, and youth group. She takes on practically everything she can shoulder. Freshman year doesn’t prove too taxing, but shortly thereafter, her responsibilities begin to overwhelm her. She tells herself that she’ll simply see it through so that she can get into a good college with a good scholarship, and then she’ll pare down to what she truly loves. She stays the course through graduation and breathes a sigh of relief. Time to really live life, right? But what about the reputation she’s established for herself? What about the conditions of her scholarship? What about graduate school admission? When the university activity fair rolls around, she finds herself going in for all the same things as before. It’s as if she can’t help herself. She’s become the type that can’t not overcommit. True happiness will have to wait. For the present, she’ll just have to be busy.

In the end, real life is not elsewhere. It is here and now, and its true meaning needs to be first discovered and then pursued.

And so, many people find themselves adrift: strangely discontented with the present, groundlessly hopeful for the future, entirely unclear as to how to get from here to there, and all jumbled up by a flurry of activity. At a certain point though, the habit becomes untenable. Though I may have learned to content myself with a life that is dispersed and disintegrated, thoughts of something more continue to crop up. This is not the “abundant life” promised by the Lord. In fact, this isn’t anything like what I imagined. What is to be done?

Rather than look abroad for some self-help scheme to make sense of life, Catholic tradition instructs us instead to return to the very things from which we have been averting our gaze. In the end, real life is not elsewhere. It is here and now, and its true meaning needs to be first discovered and then pursued. It’s not just the externals that need adjusting (weight loss, job security, state in life). Nor is it the cast of characters that needs replacing (housemates, work supervisor, on-again-off-again boyfriend). Those changes mean little without an interior transformation. Ultimately, I’m the one who has to change my approach toward the meaningful things that fill my life, and I won’t be happy until I do.

In the last century, a man named Viktor Frankl recognized the importance of acknowledging and embracing the meaning of life. Frankl was a Jewish doctor trained in neurology and psychiatry, just beginning his career in the 1930s. When war broke out, he had the opportunity to flee to America, but he decided to stay in Vienna with his family. By the end of the war, his father, mother, brother, and wife had all been killed either in Jewish ghettos or concentration camps. Frankl, too, was sent to a concentration camp — to Auschwitz — but he somehow made it out alive.

While imprisoned there, he became interested in the question of who survived and how. He was surprised to discover that the physically robust prisoners didn’t always last long, but the scrawny ones sometimes hung on with great tenacity. In the end, what he found was that those who had something to live for fared best, and those who didn’t fared worst.

Frankl came to believe that a meaningful pursuit was absolutely essential. Whatever the hope one cherished, whether big or small (love for one’s children, lingering memories worth preserving, a talent to be used), those who had a purpose were able to fight tooth and nail. As long as a man held that meaning before his mind’s eye, he was free to determine his attitude and proceed with resolve. For Frankl, his purpose was tied to the thought of his wife — a fact that he realized one day while walking to his work detail. In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, he writes, “My mind clung to my wife’s image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look was then more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.”

Inspired by his observations in the camp, Frankl went on to pioneer a psychiatric method called logotherapy. In his professional practice, he helped men and women overcome mental illness, especially depression, by aiding them to discover a meaning (logos) in life. He describes one particularly beautiful encounter of this sort:

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now how could I help him? What should I tell him? I refrained from telling him anything, but instead confronted him with a question, ‘What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?’ ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!’ Whereupon I replied, ‘You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it is you who have spared her this suffering; but now, you have to pay for it by surviving and mourning her.’ He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left the office.

Their simple exchange changed nothing about the brute facts: The man was still without his wife. And yet, the conversation broke open a world of meaning. His suffering was not without purpose; it was for his wife, and so he could willingly endure it. Frankl had grasped a keen insight: The human person is made for meaning, and “He [who] knows the ‘why’ for his existence … will be able to bear almost any ‘how.’”

This brings us back to the question of happiness. What does it mean to be happy, and what exactly does happiness look like? Psychologists sometimes distinguish pleasure-happiness (hedonic happiness) and meaning-happiness (eudaimonic happiness). The former they associate with the positive emotion of meeting needs and desires: for example, the delight you get from a good meal or a good workout. The latter they associate with long-term goals and the embrace of difficulty, like the joy you get from fasting for a specific intention or serving the homeless at a soup kitchen.

On the surface, it might seem that a life trained exclusively on pleasure-happiness (without consideration of meaning-happiness) would help one to avoid the difficult parts of human existence and lead to greater contentment. Psychologists, however, have found that long-lasting pleasure-happiness is inextricably bound up with meaning-happiness. A man who pursues mere pleasure, without taking account of meaning, ends up limiting the scope and enjoyment of his pleasure. As Frankl writes, “It is the very pursuit of happiness [pleasure-happiness] that thwarts happiness [taken together].”

Consider how this plays out in a couple’s decision of whether or not to have children. At first glance, it might seem infinitely more pleasant not to have children than to have them. No diapers to change, no discipline to administer, no stomach-churning stress. Sounds wonderful, right? Yes and no. Psychologists have found that a lack of meaningful relationships — especially family relationships — is detrimental to the psychological integrity, emotional balance, and overall fulfillment of the human person. In other words, cutting out the responsibilities of family life means missing out on all its mind- and heart-expanding joy. It means missing out on some of the best parts of life. To be happy, therefore, one must want something more than happiness, from which happiness flows. Ultimately, in order to enjoy true and lasting happiness, one has first to discover the meaning at work in his or her life and then set out deliberately in pursuit.

So, what then is life about? To what — to whom — will we entrust our heart? There are plenty of suitors, but only one worthy spouse. For, as we’ll find, a human life is a weighty thing, and some goals simply can’t bear the burden of our whole heart’s love.

Take, for instance, the pursuit of wealth. We often assign great importance to wealth and put tremendous pressure on ourselves to accumulate it. Status and fulfillment seem to hinge on income. But, as it turns out, there’s no “enough” with money. You can always own another horse, another mansion, another football team. But the true goal of life must be perfectly satisfying. What is more, wealth is for something else. Money is for acquiring material goods, and material goods are for providing security, comfort, further opportunity. Both money and material goods are means, while the goal must be a true end. Wealth, then, fails as a candidate.

What about physical beauty, athletic prowess, or perfect health? This, again, is a dead end. While bodily life is part of flourishing as a human, it doesn’t tell the whole story — or even the most important part thereof. Think of the fantastic basketball player who repeats platitudes about “teamwork” and “coach’s plan” in his post-game interviews and makes dubious decision after dubious decision off the court. Sure, his body is in excellent shape, but hasn’t he just proven himself to be another dumb jock? There’s something of his humanity that is stunted. Bodily perfection is not what life is about.

Others go in for fame, glory, or honor. Here again, the need for recognition and esteem is powerful motivation. Whether it’s the politico angling for office or the insecure coworker struggling to gain acceptance, humans prefer respect to almost every bodily good. The problem is that fame, glory, and honor are only given on account of something else. You can’t be famous merely for being famous, except in very rare cases. Fame, glory, and honor are not the goal in themselves; they merely testify that one is approaching some other goal. So, again, look further.

Even “successfully” discerning your vocation isn’t the goal. Some of us think that once we’re married or ordained or in vows, then we’ll have arrived at the end. Unfortunately, though, this misses the precise point of vocation. Marriage, priesthood, and religious life are but means to the goal, but that goal can be pursued before, during, and after you settle on your state of life. The question remains, then, what is the goal of life?

It’s clear that each of these different options somehow misses the mark. But is that all there is to be said? Do our lives signify nothing? Are we simply set up for perpetual exasperation? Thankfully, no. We are not just cosmic stuff destined for annihilation, nor are we the products of a manipulative God without thought of our happiness. Rather, we are the creation of a God who cares deeply for us, and we are made to share in his divine life on earth and to abide with him forever in heaven.

In fact, the very dissatisfaction that many of us experience in our various pursuits suggests the existence of something else out there — someone else out there — that is truly and perfectly satisfying. That something — that someone — is, of course, God himself, and we can be confident that we have what we need (or will be given what we need) to be happy in him.

By our very nature, we have the basic resources we need to live our lives well. We have bodies in which to engage the material world. We have passions by which to engage our emotional world. Finally, we have intellects and wills with which to engage the intelligible world. The intellect and the will are what set us apart from the beasts, what most define us as humans. They are the way in which we are most made to the image and likeness of God. They empower us to know reality and its Creator, and to love it (and him). Thus equipped, we step into a world of true and good things among which we have to pick and choose.

There’s something peculiar about our picking and choosing, though: Our intellect is never satisfied with just one limited, knowable thing, and our will is never satisfied with just one limited, lovable thing. Having learned that 3 x 7 = 21, we aren’t liable to consider the rest of our times tables unimportant. Having tasted our first chicken sandwich, it’s almost certain that we’ll return for a second. We are made for all of reality, and our hunger and thirst for it are practically infinite.

As a result, we are incurably restless. There is always another chocolate cookie to be devoured or another accolade to be earned. We need constant novelty to take the edge off our continual dissatisfaction. It seems, then, that our infinite desire is something of a curse. After all, isn’t it to blame for the perennial temptation to busyness? Yes and no. While our infinite desire may nag us with the feeling of unfulfillment, it doesn’t force us to seek lower goods and less meaningful pursuits. It is at the root of all our meaningful pursuits — even the highest among them — constantly spurring us on in search of what gives genuine peace and withholding satisfaction until we have found it. Our infinite desire is a blessing. It keeps us from settling for anything less than the full grandeur of our high calling as persons made in the image of God.

The seventeenth century Anglican poet George Herbert captures this sense of restlessness-as-blessing in his poem entitled “The Pulley.” He writes,

When God at first made man,
Having a glass of blessings standing by,
‘Let us,’ said he, ‘pour on him all we can.
Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,
Contract into a span.’

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

‘For if I should,’ said he,
‘Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me,
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both should losers be.

‘Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness;
Let him be rich and weary, that at least,
If goodness lead him not, yet weariness
May toss him to my breast.’

The point is plain. God withheld rest for our good. Restlessness is his gift. If any random thing or experience could satisfy us, we’d run the risk of ignoring the splendor of what awaits us in heaven. If every fast-food combo meal could make us perfectly content, we’d never make it to the eternal banquet. We would “rest in Nature, not [in] the God of Nature” and miss out on all the loveliness that lies beyond the immediacy of sense pleasure. This is why, as Herbert puts it, God “made a stay” by withholding (or delaying) his gift of abiding peace. God has made us “rich and weary” that we might set out in search of him.

This is the real drama of the human condition: We are wayfarers. We are pilgrims. This world is not our home. Our intellects can always be further illumined, and our wills can always be further strengthened. We can’t just put up our feet and declare ourselves happy enough with what we have. This life is not a place of arrival. It is a place of departure. There is nothing here upon which we can hang our whole heart’s love. There is only one goal and horizon of ultimate meaning for us: We are made for God and “our hearts are restless until they rest in him.”

Thankfully, we don’t have to figure out the goal. It is revealed to us — in creation, in history, in our very nature. The goal is not even a matter of choice. It’s in our very DNA, and we can’t escape its call. Josef Pieper writes in Faith, Hope, Love:

In the act of being created we are — without being asked and without even the possibility of being asked — shot toward our destination like an arrow. Therefore, a kind of gravitational impulse governs our desire for happiness. Nor can we have any power over this impulse because we ourselves are it.

To be created in the image of God — open to a sharing in God’s life — means that our very identity and self-understanding is bound up with the pursuit of God as our end. We may be fooled into seeking lower things as if they were our end, whether wealth, bodily perfection, honor, even vocation; but, when taken on their own terms and not directed to God, these lower goals are but impoverished versions of the divine fullness. We are made for God, whether we recognize it or not. No amount of busyness can blot out the claim this vocation has on each and every human person.

Even if paralyzed by indecision or immersed in a sea of activity, the human heart longs for the divine perfection and peace. The point cannot be emphasized enough: God has created us that we might partake of his very inner life. Sometimes when we talk about God, he may sound far-off or abstract. But what lies in store is remarkably present and concrete. His inner life is undivided, whole, perfect, good, infinite, unchanging, eternal, wise, just, and loving — abiding in the communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is all of this and more, for he transcends the creaturely limitations according to which we imagine him. And, perhaps most astonishingly, he is for you.

God wants you to be happy. He created you for this express purpose. He trains the whole of his attention on securing it.

God wants you to be happy. He created you for this express purpose. He trains the whole of his attention on securing it. He is not looking to trip you up with temptation and trial. He is not waiting at a distance for you to fail. He is working patiently and ceaselessly to draw you to himself who is happiness itself. Your very existence is testimony that God’s happiness cannot be contained within the bounds of his divine nature. His happiness brims over and fills creation that it might return to him in praise. In effect, God has a secret too good to keep — the secret of his divine happiness — and he shares that secret in and with you that you might know and love it now and for eternity.

We can be confident that it is possible to seek this happiness always. Everything that we encounter on earth is permitted or willed by God with an eye toward drawing us to him. Present difficulties are not divorced from our happiness, but are mysteriously related to it. As a result, for the present, there is great delight to be enjoyed and great suffering to be embraced. Earth may afford a foretaste of heaven, but it cannot supply lasting happiness. The human heart will only be wholly satisfied when fixed permanently in God.

Life on earth is an exile from the heavenly homeland, and the journey home can be very hard. The difficulty to be endured is not without purpose, though. As Fr. Bede Jarrett writes in No Abiding City:

Pilgrims, travellers, strangers, that is all we be! But we seek a city, whose maker and builder is God — a city that is God Himself. We shall enter within it by His mercy. God Himself shall be our home. Cannot you be grateful for the road though it be rough and uncertain? It does all a road was ever made to do. It takes you home.

With the goal established, shouldn’t that make life a lot easier and simpler? With God as our end, it seems like the steps to get there should be pretty straightforward: Do the things that God commands or permits or otherwise counsels, and all will be well. You can imagine the zealous convert’s initial resolve: When I wake up, I’ll choose God! When I go to bed, I’ll choose God! Every opportunity in between, I’ll choose God! It’s that easy, right?

Unfortunately, no. Concrete decisions in real time are more involved than the movements of spontaneous enthusiasm. What about when you get asked on a second date after having only kind of enjoyed the first one? What about when you have to determine whether to take a gap year based on your mother’s tenuous employment situation? What about when you fear that your job has you implicated in unethical research? What does it mean to choose God in those situations?

It’s true that having God as our goal makes life easier and simpler in a sense, but there are many means to that goal that need to be arranged. Certain things are ruled out (lying, cheating, stealing); certain things are ruled in (sacraments, prayer, penance); and, other things begin to take concrete shape (forgive my father, reconcile with my old roommate, discern my vocation). But a lot of the details still need to be sorted out. So, how does one go about it? That’s the point of this book.

If God is the goal, our trajectory toward him needs to shape every dimension of our existence. Life is not about skipping to the back of the book and looking at the answer key. The point is not merely to end up well. The point is to live well. To that end, we need to be formed for the task at hand. Think of what follows as formation. So, with the path set before us, let’s get busy — not “crazy busy,” mind you, but busily dedicated to the work of living life well as God enlightens and emboldens us in our pursuit of him.

How do you understand happiness? How does your experience of life to this point compare to that understanding?

What aspects of your daily life would you rather get over, get under, or get around? What obstacles do you experience when seeking to find meaning in difficult moments? How can you address those obstacles?

What do you find most discouraging about being on the way? How can you find encouragement in the midst of your life’s pilgrimage?