Most people think of happiness as essentially a selfish issue: "I want to be happy – and
I want to be happy for me." I would like to suggest that in fact happiness
is far, far more than a selfish desire. In fact, it is a moral obligation.
I know that most people have never thought of happiness in this way. Neither did I for
much of my life. I thought that happiness, and especially the pursuit of happiness, was
all about oneself. But it isn’t.
Whether or not you’re happy, and most importantly, whether or not you act happy is about altruism,
not selfishness -- because it is about how we affect others’ lives. And that’s what
makes it a moral issue. Ask anybody who was raised by an unhappy parent
whether or not happiness is a moral issue, and I assure you the answer will be "yes".
It’s no fun being raised by an unhappy parent, or being married to an unhappy person, or
being the parent of an unhappy child, or working with an unhappy co-worker.
Our happiness affects others -- profoundly. That’s why happiness is a moral obligation.
We are morally obligated to at least act as happy as possible – even if we don’t feel
happy. People can‘t be guided by feelings because it is how we act that affects others
– not how we feel. A good analogy to bad moods is bad breath.
Why do we brush our teeth multiple times every day? It’s not only because of hygiene, it’s
because we want to present good breath to anybody who we come in contact with.
Well, the same thing holds true for our moods. A bad mood should be regarded exactly as we
regard bad breath. Why are you inflicting it on me? Or, why am I inflicting it on you?
It’s just not right. That’s why one should endeavor as much as possible, to act as happy
as possible, as often as possible. And just about anyone can do this. No matter
how unhappy you may feel at any given moment, you can – and have to – make a decision
on how to act. We may not be free to control whether we feel sad or happy, but we are free
to control whether or not we present a happy countenance to others.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t share how we feel with our best friends, including
hopefully, our spouse. Of course we can, and without overdoing it, we should. "You know
I’m really sad. I had this problem at work today; I have this problem with my marriage;
I have this problem with my kid, I have this problem with my parents."
But you don’t inflict a bad mood on anybody. That’s a different thing altogether.
We all have the capacity to control how we express ourselves, no matter how we feel.
I can prove it. Imagine someone who is just acting miserably to his or her spouse when
somebody comes to the door. Have you ever noticed how nicely such a person will treat
the stranger? How were they able – in a split second – to go from inflicting their
awful mood on their spouse to acting beautifully toward the stranger who is at the door? Obviously
we can control our moods. Or, how about this? Let’s say you are chronically
in a bad mood and I offered you ten thousand dollars a week not to be in a bad mood. Do
you think this would affect your ability to be in a good mood? I suspect it would.
And, to be honest, we even have the power to affect how we feel, not only how we act.
Abraham Lincoln famously said that we are as happy as we decide to be. That is exactly
what we should decide. Being happier is good for us and it is what we owe everybody who
is in our lives. Becoming happier is another great benefit
of acting happy: the happier we act, the happier we will feel. We think that our actions are
determined by our feelings. But we have the power to achieve the opposite -- to shape
our feelings by our actions. How we act influences our feelings more than our feelings should be allowed to influence our behavior.
So, yes, indeed, we do have a moral obligation
to be, or at least to act, happy. The happy make the world better and the unhappy make
it worse. Happiness is a huge issue. Lincoln was right,
we are as happy as we decide to be; it’s time to make that decision.
I’m Dennis Prager.