Happiness and Suffering

Most of the people I work with on a daily basis want to be happy.  Those folks are college students.  If you ask a college student what they want out of life, they normally reply that they want to be happy.  Of course, they want other things, too.  They want good jobs and typically some kind of relationship and family.  But I find one big thing they all want is happiness.  I don’t blame them; I want to be happy, too.

It is hard to imagine very many people who prefer sadness.  That said, surely there are many sad folks in the world.  And like me, you doubtlessly have been sad on occasion.  But no one I know prefers to be sad all the time.  Even though we may recognize there are appropriate times of sadness, we don’t want these to last longer than necessarily.  

This the backdrop that I had when I recently read some words from Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk who is Vietnamese, but living in France since the Vietnam conflict.  Hanh is probably one of the most well-known living Buddhists.  He is quite old and has had significant health problems, but his many books and teachings have helped a huge number of people world-wide.  I enjoy reading him and find him quite insightful.  He talks about things like compassion in ways that make sense and seem doable for normal people.  You don’t have to be a saint to make a difference.

And so it was, I was reading along to hear Hanh proclaim, “I think we need some suffering, all of us, in order to appreciate the happiness that is available to us.” (162)  I gasped.  We all need some suffering.  Quickly, I wanted to exclaim, “Not me!”  I don’t need any suffering.  I can imagine Hanh smiling at me and wondering why I think I am an exception?  He actually says “all of us.”  If this is true, none of us are exempt from the suffering deal.  That might make us sad, just thinking about it.

I know about the fancy philosophical and theological discussions of what is called “theodicy?  This big word simply is a way of asking why there is suffering.  But this is not what Hanh is doing.  He is not talking about the necessity or inevitability of suffering.  Instead he says we need some suffering.  I can make fun of it by saying it sounds like he wants us to go to the corner store and pick up some suffering for the week.  Again, I want to say, “Not me!”

However, I go back to the second half of that sentence.  We need suffering “in order to appreciate the happiness that is available.”  I am delighted to know that happiness is available.  Immediately, I want some---I to want to be happy.  Everyone does.  Reading that sentence closely, I realize he is saying “in order to appreciate” happiness.  This causes me to ponder perhaps I have been happy, but didn’t even appreciate it.  It is almost as if I could be happy and not know it.  Dare I think it?  Is Hanh actually saying if we were happy all the time, we would not really know it, much less appreciate it?

That is exactly what he is saying.  In an extended argument, he makes the point with another example like breathing.  Unless we have asthma or a cold or something like that, it is easy to take breathing for granted.  We breath and don’t even think about it.  We certainly don’t appreciate it.  The same goes for walking.  If we break a leg, then we can appreciate life without a broken leg.  Why not learn to be happy before breaking the leg?  It is really tough to do.  Suffering, having a cold, breaking a leg all help us learn to appreciate our lives when we don’t have the problem.

He concludes that little section with some clarity that helps me understand.  We all need some amount of suffering in order to be able to appreciate the well-being and happiness that are available to us.”  He adds one more way to see it.  “You need the darkness in order to appreciate the beautiful morning.”  That makes sense to me.  And I believe I am coming to see that appreciating happiness is different than merely being happy.  For me appreciating is a spiritual quality.  Appreciate means I recognize and value the reality of happiness or anything else that comes my way as gift.  

I best understand this if I think about the times I say, “thank you,” when someone gives me something.  I do this in part because it is socially acceptable.  My parents drilled it into me to thank folks.  I learned it and do it.  But doing it as a matter of rote response is not the same thing as appreciating.  To appreciate is to assign value.  Appreciation is rooted in the heart.  It is more than a socially acceptable response.  

Appreciating is a soul-response.  This is what Thich Nhat Hanh is seeking.  He wants us to go deeper within to value happiness when it comes, as the morning does, after suffering and night.  Without some suffering, we will not learn this.  If I learn it, then when some suffering comes my way, I have a chance to get ready for the happiness that also will come.  May I also be ready to recognize it and appreciate it.