What is the one thing that all parents everywhere want for their children above all other things? If your answer is not happiness I’d be genuinely interested to hear what it is. There’s a familiar expression, you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. Our children’s pain, physical and emotional, weighs on us as much, if not more sometimes, as it does on them.
Parents can go to extraordinary and sometimes ludicrous lengths to try and protect their children from pain and life’s vicissitudes. That this is ultimately both impossible and also a profoundly poor preparation for the necessary evolution into adulthood does not stop the effort being commonplace.
However natural it is to want happiness for your children it is profoundly misguided to teach them that it should be their goal in life. Chasing happiness is like running after a will-o’-the-wisp it usually remains tantalisingly out of reach and a huge amount of effort can be expended in its pursuit.
Instead, if children are taught to identify what is meaningful to them they will usually find that happiness is a happy by-product of its cultivation. The other significant thing about meaningful endeavour is that it is far less susceptible to the corrupting influence of money. We all know that money can’t buy happiness but that does not stop us feeling in our weaker moments that maybe it can. The irony being that time spent meaninglessly leaves a hole in our lives and we mistakenly believe that money will fill that hole.
Work provides purpose in life and work pays the bills. But it is a statement of the obvious that not all work is meaningful to all people. When the work itself is meaningful then the income it earns becomes almost incidental, assuming it enables a living. However, some mistakenly seek meaning in the income alone, overlooking the intrinsic value of the endeavour itself. When in fact the intrinsic value IS the value.
Meaning isn’t solely found in labour and work can be a means to an end. Many toil at dull or repetitive jobs to enable that which is truly meaningful to them but many just toil. E. M. Forster’s mantra ‘Only Connect’ probably resonates with me more than any words in literature. Not in a vapid networking sense of the expression but in terms of genuine, real and, yes meaningful, connection.
We all know, unless we are extremely unfortunate, how powerful are those moments in life of profound connection, friendships made, true loves met, sorrow shared, joy expressed. That for me is where meaning resides. But meaning isn’t exclusively found in people. Using one’s body to its utmost, giving oneself to artistic expression, being in and tending to nature: there is meaning in all that. For hermits it’s isolation and contemplation. Meaning is myriad as people and where meaning goes happiness is sure to follow.
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