André Malraux, the French novelist, described a country priest who had heard confessions for many decades and summed up what he had learned about human nature in two statements:
"First of all, people are much more unhappy than one thinks...and second, there is no such thing as a grown-up person." These two observations are very closely related, if not one and the same: people who have not grown up cannot cultivate their souls and spirits, and therefore remain chronically susceptible to unhappiness.
The happiness that we all yearn for is a sentiment commonly associated with the lost paradise of our childhood-when we felt omnipotent, entitled, and immortal. Happiness in adulthood, however, requires realism, reciprocity, and coming to terms with one's mortality. It is cultivation of forgiveness, tolerance, patience, generosity, and compassion. If this sounds more like "sainthood" than adulthood, it is because "the first step toward spiritual growth," in the words of Scott Peck, is "growing up."
People seek happiness everywhere, except where it may be found. They acquire material possessions, money, and power, and at times explore the avenues of therapy and analysis, or even medication. They try to work through their past and present conflicts, develop insight and empathy, pull out their pathological anchorings, cuddle their inner child, and redesign their outer adult. They attend inspiring workshops and read sundry self-help books dealing with the meaning of life and secular spirituality. Candlelight dinners, gifts, and communication from the heart, however, go only so far. Some people try to find comfort in the structure of religion. Others cannot tolerate the rituals and specific prescriptions, repetitive sermons, and literalness of religionism. Some devote themselves to Buddhism and the like; others find such practices incongruent with their culture and religious background, and they drop out. Yet even the failures of all of these attempts are relative successes, though transient, as each attempt opens the door for another: the seeking itself generates hope.
Nonetheless, those unsatisfied always have a feeling that something is missing; some "thing" they cannot easily articulate that always escapes them. Though not totally sure, they suspect that the "thing" has to do with an ill-defined happiness. They search for life grounding in old and New Age philosophies, struggle between an existential void and pessimism, and experiential refills. They get married and divorced, have love affairs, experiment with drugs and alcohol, change jobs and towns.
With each of these changes, they find that vague unhappiness and restlessness seem to decline temporarily, but a gnawing, hollowing dysphoria always returns. Some of these people are therapists, counselors, rabbis, priests, ministers, or philosophers themselves. They are even more demoralized by the fact that their profession doesn't make them any better. This vague discomfort isn't limited to any specific group. Most of my friends, students, patients, and acquaintances try to speak about similar feelings whenever they allow themselves to be vulnerable to me. I know exactly what they are all talking about, for I have been there myself.
The "thing" that everyone is yearning for is not mere ordinary and transient happiness but rather an extraordinary and permanent joyful serenity. Psychologically, it is a state of fully grown-up adulthood anchored in a soulful and spiritual existence. The door to this state of mind can be opened only by a combination key involving both the soul and the spirit. It involves the soul through love: the love of others, the love of work, and the love of belonging. It involves the spirit through believing: believing the sacred, believing in unity, and believing in transformation. All culminate in the belief in and love of God.
There is no easy or quick path to happiness, only a slow and arduous one toward it, as there is neither an end product nor a finishing line, only a starting point. In your quest for joyful serenity, there is no single spot where you can start. Where you are right now is the best place to begin.
From The Art of Serenity
