Slippery Happiness

This BBC story from last April made one of their best-of-'07 lists. It reveals that the fine people of Denmark regularly come out on top of an annual happiest people of Europe survey. Why? The story kicks around ideas, including Denmark's shiny socialism. You've got to read through the whole thing to get to the most likely answer: Danes tend to expect the worst -- and then feel really great when it doesn't happen.

Researcher Kaare Christensen looked back over three decades of surveys that had created the legend of the "happy Dane".

"In countries such as Italy and Spain, people have much higher expectations for what the coming year will bring, but they're not especially happy or satisfied with their existence."

But Danes take a more realistic view of life, he suggested at the time.

"Year after year we're just happy that things didn't go as badly as we'd feared."

A good friend of my brother wrote this in his high school yearbook: "Low expectations leads to few disappointments and many surprises." Maybe it's the national motto of Denmark.

As negative as it sounds, it's not a bad way to approach life. This story (also from the BBC) reveals that one of the great marriage-killing questions of our time is, "Am I really happy?" Here's the story tagline: "The key to a happy relationship could be accepting that some miserable times are unavoidable, experts say."

It turns out that happiness is a really lousy goal in life. Mostly, when people hope or expect some life scenario to make them happy, it doesn't. But often, happiness smacks you right in the face when you're busy doing things that really matter (and expecting obstacles along the way).

For Christians, the Bible doesn't promise much in the way of happiness on earth -- or demand it as a sign of being a "good Christian." We're commanded to "be joyful" in the hope of heaven and the eternal happiness we'll find there. We're also offered peace of mind and contentment -- both in the face of hard times. Those things are all like happiness, in a way, but that particular blue-sky-and-sunshine feeling seems to be beside the point, available mostly when you give up looking for it and settle down into doing what's in front of you.

That makes sense when you read Ecclesiastes. Solomon, the Preacher, says over and over how meaningless life on this side of heaven really is. Nothing fully satisfies the longing of a man's heart on this fallen orb. We're built to be with God forever, and we're not, yet. So give up the search for meaning in the here and now (apart from eternity through Jesus) and -- wait for it -- "I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live." (Eccl. 3:12)

So here's an idea: Let's all take the "how happy am I?" guage off of our dashboards and replace it with the "look at all the unexpected good stuff that happened today while I was doing my work" dial. Just don't expect it to make you happy -- or it won't.