Why Success Isn't Making You Happy
When the Pursuit of Happiness Goes Unexamined
I. The Pursuit of Happiness
It’s July 4th weekend here in America, where we celebrate our independence with things like hot dogs, cold beer, and jet skis. 247 years ago, in what must’ve been a stifling Philadelphia home, Thomas Jefferson drafted our founding mythology. We are “…endowed with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” He wrote these words while an enslaved 14-year-old, Robert Hemings, fixed his tea and dressed him.
As I wrote about in my last article, this origin myth has been under scrutiny from a host of ideologies lately. I suspect this will only get worse in the coming years. I’m getting the sense that Marxism will have a resurgence and once again become a serious challenger. Though this may be because I’m attending a class on it right now and it’s at the forefront of my mind.
I’m struck by how radical of an ideology Marxism is. We tend to think of Marxists as being liberal (at least in America), but it’s rooted in opposition to liberalism. And liberalism is what our nation was founded upon: freedom of religion, of speech, of individual rights, and free enterprise.
The Marxist teachers in my class criticize Jefferson’s vision of humanity. To them, he is pushing off an ideal vision of the world to some vague point in the future. A point which, by design, may never come. They say we need revolution. And we need it now.
As John Stuart Mill said, “He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.” While I’m sympathetic to the same concerns as the Marxists, I’m not convinced they have the answer. I hold the unpopular belief that the founding fathers had the right idea. And our job is to play our part in that ongoing evolution. Not to tear the whole thing down and start over.
But in case I’m losing you, the focus of this piece has nothing to do about politics. It’s about a particular line in Jefferson’s writing that I would like to challenge here:
“The pursuit of happiness”
II. Anthony Bourdain & Happiness on the Horizon
For many years, my sense of fulfillment and happiness always seemed to lie somewhere on the horizon. This manifested in different ways; relentless pursuit of a career in filmmaking, a need for external validation, and adventure seeking to name a few. I would get rushes of joy when things were going my way. But they would never last. For years I daydreamed about being born in a different time. A time when things were better. More fun. Simpler.
I used to think I was wired incorrectly, but then I was handed a life-changing book called, Mindfulness in Plain English. Its author, Bhante Gunaratana, introduced me to the basic ideas of Buddhism. Through my practice, I came to realize how pervasive and doomed the pursuit of happiness really is.
The documentary Roadrunner, about the life of Anthony Bourdain, is a perfect encapsulation of this. It’s a tragic warning of what can happen when the pursuit of happiness is left unexamined. Dave Chappelle joked, that “Anthony Bourdain had the greatest job that show business ever produced. This *** flew around the world and ate delicious meals with outstanding people. And that man with that job hung himself in a luxury suite in France.”
Bourdain had everything one could dream of. Money, fame, adventure, and a career doing what he loved. But he never confronted a hole deep within himself. In the film, we see his attempts to fill that hole over and over. As a young man he filled it with heroin. After becoming famous, he moved on to traveling the world, living on the edge, jujitsu, romantic partners, and self-righteous activism.
There’s a scene in the film that I found particularly striking. Bourdain sits in a psychotherapist’s office and says he wants to “…look out the window and feel that life is good.” The therapist asks him if he really wants to change. He sits there for a while and finally says, “I think it’s too late.”
It seems a lot of people feel it’s too late. More people are killed by suicide each year than homicide. The rates of drug overdose death are increasing. How many people (more subtly) eat themselves to death? Look at the endless pursuit of material wealth and the havoc it is wreaking on our environment. Visit Los Angeles and look up into the hills where all the celebrities barricade themselves from the outside world. Is it any wonder that divorce is rampant there, along with drug abuse, depression, and generally awful behavior?
If Bourdain and the Hollywood producers are that miserable, what makes you think you’ll be any different?
III. The American Dream & Wisdom of the Buddha
The whole promise of the American Dream is tied up in this fallacy of finding happiness on the horizon. The implication is that it’s something to be found outside oneself. But what happens when Manifest Destiny reaches the Pacific Islands of Hawaii and the northern edges of Alaska? How can we search for a better life when there’s no more western frontier? What do we do when there are more Christmas gifts under the tree than we know what to do with?
Has America reached the same place that Bourdain found himself in that hotel in France? He must’ve felt like he’d done and achieved all he could possibly dream of, and yet he was in the same place where he started. He must’ve felt like there was nowhere left to turn.
Fortunately, the answer to this problem is extremely simple and it’s been around for thousands of years. Buddhist philosophy states that human suffering comes from our attachment to a world that is constantly changing. Empires rise and fall. Relationships come and go. Wealth is built and lost. Beauty fades. We grow old and die. Our natural desire is to cling on to what we have and to pursue new shiny objects that will make us happy.
We chase wealth, career, romantic partners, material things, ideas about our children, and ideas about ourselves. These are all in a state of constant change, and the more we pursue our happiness through them, the more it eludes us. That’s why being successful doesn’t make you happy. And it’s quite possible that the opposite is true.
I used to look up to Bourdain and other American writers with a dark nature like Jack Kerouac, Hunter S. Thompson, and Ernest Hemingway. I believed in a perverse and false idea that to be a true artist meant living in an arena of agnst and darkness. Nonsense. The best creative work comes from a place of inner peace, joyfulness, and without attachment to results. If you do creative work so you can become famous or get praised or get rich, you’re doomed.
What I find so powerful about the principles of Buddhism is that they form a practice that you can refine over the course of your lifetime. I’ve come a long way, but I also have a lot more to go. Time and time again, I return to the same basic truth. It's all about letting go.
By letting go of my self-importance, my bitterness, my desires, my opinions, and my notions of how things ought to be, I find inner peace. I don’t believe the universe cares about my problems. And neither should I.
A Final Word on Jefferson
Since I started this piece on a tangent, I’ll return to it for some final thoughts.
As difficult as it is for some to understand, the founding fathers were men of their time. As far as I can tell, the insights of the Buddha had not yet made their way across the Atlantic in the 18th Century. But my sense is if they had, they would have had an audience in Jefferson.
What draws me so strongly to the principles of Buddhism is its simplicity. It’s based on observable facts of the known universe. It doesn’t take a PhD to understand it. You don’t need a priestly class to decipher the ancient texts. You don’t need to worship the Buddha. You only bow to him in appreciation and respect of his insights.
Insights which are self-evident. Common sense.
Things are about to get weird in America. And it’s going to happen fast. If you’re not used to change, I’d recommend you get started. The vision of the founders is going to be challenged and may not survive. But the founders knew they were doing something radical that wouldn’t last forever. I say we keep the good parts and modernize the bad.
It’s called Americana mindfulness.
Love this article! Thankfully, I can't say that I was ever striving to find the elusive Pursuit To Happiness. So much negativity was built into me that just the realization that I was "enough" was seen and felt as success.
The pursuit of happiness is not meant for all. Marxists want to bring the depression that's lived in so many other countries where only elites flourish. I believe The Founding Fathers had it right all along. They were most likely the most illuminated men of their time, specifically for the purpose of which they set forth to create: A New World with new ideas. The idea embedded in the Constitution are of course still up for debate, they are written in an ingenious way which does allow for some evolution. Also, I do not think the current political paradigm applies to the Founding Fathers, but they were all clearly in favor of limiting control and power of central governments. In today's world that equates more to conservatism, but limiting the power of central governments did also apply to classical liberalism, which is why the country did so well up until now: because the left and the right used to agree on the most important concepts that held our society together.