Happiness

Happiness is temporal. It tends to come in washes. As soon as happiness sweeps in it is drawn back into the vast ocean before the next wave comes.

As a society we are obsessed with happiness.  We want it.  Buying more things is supposed to bring happiness and it usually does until the joy of newness wears off.  Then we go shopping once again for the happiness fix.  The same can be said for the completed business deal or quota exceeded or beating our rival.  All these things bring a brief helping of happiness.  Then what?

 Julius Lester wrote, “I don’t like it when gentile and Jewish friends greet me at Rosh Hashanah with “Happy New Year.”  Rosh Hashanah is not the equivalent of January  1.

“I have never understood what “Happy New Year” is supposed to mean.  I’ve never been sure that I want to be wished happiness.  I’m not sure I know what happiness is, or that it is as important as we think.  Happiness feels better than misery, but some of the most important periods of my life have been the ones of profound unhappiness.  For all the feelings of well-being that happiness bestows upon us, it is not the goal of life.”

For our faith, happiness is not found in the goal but the process.  Achievement is usually seen as the end result.  Did we score the sale?  Did we beat the competition?  Yet, as we learn in life (and as Judaism tries to teach), it is the ‘meantime’ that matters most of all.  How we get there is more important than our arrival.

Our sages, of blessed memory, tell us to be conscious of kavannah.  Kavannah is the how of life.  How we pray is important.  That we pray is important but when the act is meaningful, worthwhile, said with fervor, it becomes a powerful life-changing force.

How we speak to other people makes a great difference.  The words may be correct but when facial clues do not match the spoken word, the communication is undermined.

How we eat matters.  How we work, behave, do tzedaka,  or dress may be more important than what we do.   Disingenuous acts do not nourish the soul - neither the giver’s or the receiver’s.  Yet, when we act with kavannah, what we do takes on great meaning.  In fact, the way deeds are executed is the pathway to holiness. 

Shavuot is coming.  It is the anniversary of the Giving of Torah.  Traditionally we study throughout the long night of Shavuot because it is a time of seeking God.  It is the seeking, the quest, the kavannah that is the ultimate and most enduring happiness. 

An old Yiddish saying: “When the head is a fool, the body is in trouble.”  With thought and deliberation even the most insignificant acts become meaningful.

Investing psychic energy into our actions enables them to become holy.