PLEASED TO BE HAPPY

Stoics aren't grim, we're joyful

My family has a tradition where we pick a quote to write on our hearts. It’s a belief we keep alive in our thoughts. It is a casual custom. Perhaps once a month, one of us shares a line or two that inspired us. At the moment, I’m reflecting on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s belief that “Nothing great was ever accomplished without enthusiasm.”

I like liking things. A big component of happiness is enthusiasm. If you engage the world with vigor, you will find plenty of things to please you.

In Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, he writes that “Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.” But he doesn’t mean sitting around smiling all day. He says that “Happiness is a kind of activity of the soul”--that to be truly happy you must be doing something. This is where enthusiasm comes in.

Aristotle doesn’t look happy here, but maybe he thought the statue was a poor likeness

The Jesuit priest and philosopher Robert Spitzer has developed a framework of four levels of happiness, based on the ideas of Aristotle. They are:

1. Laetus, or happiness in a thing. You are happy because you have a book.

2. Felix, or happiness of comparison. You are happy because you have more books than your friend.

3. Beatitudo, or happiness from doing good. You are happy because you gave a book to your friend.

4. Sublime beatitudo, or supreme happiness. This is similar to the Greek idea of eudaimonia, or flourishing. You are happy because books exist.

Now THIS guy looks happy!

I tip my hat again to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who wrote, “It is one of the most beautiful compensations of life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.” I believe that enthusiastically doing small acts of good will bring you to experience eudaimonia, the flourishing state of happiness the Greeks aspired to. As Epictetus stated, “our soul is dyed with the color of our thoughts.” Go dye your soul with acts of kindness and happiness. It is all in your control, in your way of thinking.

*This post was adapted from our book “Wise Up.” You can get a copy here:

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