Heavenly Hurt, it gives us —
We can find no scar,
But internal difference —
Where the Meanings, are —
—Emily Dickinson
Photographing babies in the morgue, filming a dying young man, dressing a corpse, giving the sacrament to an old woman in a nursing home, watching the northern lights in Iceland with your wife and youngest son, cleaning a home so dirty you don’t even want to wash your hands there, driving a neighbor to the vet because a car ran over her cat, swimming naked in the Baltic Sea with your German friends, consoling a child whose marriage has gone awry. What do these events have in common? That’s your task. Connect the dots before I get there.
We talk a lot about happiness at church, and we often use the phrase “the plan of happiness” to talk about the plan of salvation. We borrow the phrase from Alma: “Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness” (Alma 42:8). Living gospel principles is supposed to provide a happy life with a happy ending, despite the hardships we inevitably encounter.
We are not the only ones who talk about happiness. Happiness studies abound, from academic research to TED Talks to stories on NPR. Apparently, the most popular course in the history of Harvard is on happiness. The United States’ Declaration of Independence even states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Though there is debate about what “happiness” means, it’s common for us to think of it as a state of pleasant well-being. Our needs are met. We’re content. All is right with the world.
I have certainly experienced, and continue to experience, happy moments, from eating a pain au chocolat with my wife in the Luxembourg Garden in Paris or celebrating my children’s graduations to navigating a river in a kayak under blue skies in a beautiful canyon or seeing the delight in a friend’s face when I succeed in finding the right gift. I was, no doubt, happy when I baptized a few families while a missionary in Belgium and France. I feel happy when I can ski by myself in the San Juan Wilderness.
But what about the in-between times? The months between baptisms, the days before the weekend, the hours spent chauffeuring kids to lacrosse practice or waiting for the cable guy? What about all the unpleasant, vexing, or just mundane moments that lie beyond the hedonic treadmill—which is actually most of the time? Are those our options? Happy or unhappy? Are we supposed to think in terms of balancing the arrival of a newborn baby with the death of grandma?
We often talk about our families as a source of happiness, and no doubt we can list many happy moments. On the other hand, raising children is also a source of unpleasantness, from changing diapers to cleaning up after the stomach flu, from fighting with teenagers to arguing with spouses, from time in the ER to graveside services. Raising a family, more often than not, is exhausting, stressful, unending work. Our children never really go away. Our worries about them are present even when they are absent. It may sting to hear this, but researchers find that, “parents are less happy interacting with their children than they are exercising, eating, and watching television.” Ouch!
Join the Church; then you’ll be happier! Well, I’m not so sure. With Church membership comes responsibilities and entanglements that bring as much grief as pleasure. And, if we’re honest with ourselves, we are at the root of others’ pain, anger, and frustration. The pressure to improve can be suffocating. We need to read our scriptures every day; no, we need to study them; no, we need to ponder them. I rarely exit our chapel doors a happier man. Instead, responsibility, guilt, and self-doubt weigh me down like a poorly packed backpack.
Finally, our explanations of the atonement are not happy stories. We don’t talk about lavish parties sponsored by a generous host who invites us for no good reason. Instead, we talk about advocates who negotiate with merciless bankers. We compare Jesus’ sacrifice to boys who take lashings for others. We talk about a sacrifice so intense that Jesus bled from every pore. These stories encourage us to wince at the pain, and feel guilty if we don’t appreciate the sacrifice. Act on the atonement, we often say, lest we cause even more disappointment and suffering. Where is the happiness here?
We should, perhaps, stop talking about happiness. Happiness seems fleeting, guaranteed to eventually disappoint and evaporate, like trying to hold mercury between our fingers. What if we stopped being happiness junkies looking for our next fix? What if we replaced the pursuit of happiness—even the plan of happiness—with a search for meaning?
What’s the difference between happiness and meaning?
When I talk about a meaningful experience, I’m not talking about something we can easily summarize as service or compassion or even love. Meaningful experiences connect us to another human; they give us an experience of awe; they expand the significance of our lives; they help us transcend our puny selves.
When I was a deacon, I had to serve the sacrament at a nursing home. One woman couldn’t bring the cup to her lips, so I had to do it for her. Her quivering, wrinkled lips nauseated my twelve-year-old self. I never wanted to go there again. I now recognize that that moment could have been a meaningful experience, because it gave me the opportunity to look beyond my own desires and wishes. I’m not saying that I should have been happy to help her drink that water. I’m saying that I failed to recognize that lifting that cup to her lips was a chance to connect to a human very unlike myself. Admittedly, that’s a lot to expect from a deacon, and the fact that the experience still lives with me suggests it may be meaningful after all.
When I think about my mission, the meaningful moments were not baptisms or conversions, despite my smiles. Instead, meaningful moments occurred when I visited a man in a hospital burn unit who had tried to commit suicide; when I periodically lunched with a manic-depressive German woman who needed someone to talk to; when we spoke to a widower who had no clocks in his house because time didn’t matter to him. Was I happy on my mission? Sometimes. Rarely, actually. Did my mission offer meaningful experiences that continue to shape me today? More often.
I have a niece who is a professional photographer, and for a time she photographed babies who, for one reason or another, didn’t make it out of the hospital. The mothers and fathers wanted one final memory. She never said those photo sessions, with devastated parents and a little bundle with bluish feet, made her happy. But they were always meaningful.
When my wife was released as Relief Society president, I asked her, “What was one of the most meaningful experiences you had as president?” She said that it was preparing her dead Relief Society sisters for burial. She didn’t describe the experiences as pleasant; she never said, “It filled me with happiness.” However, she did find the simple act of dressing a woman in temple clothes, despite wrestling with the stiff limbs, meaningful.
When it was clear that a friend wouldn’t survive cancer, his family asked me to record him on video so he could send some messages in a digital bottle to his kids at future points in their lives. Those sessions were not happy moments—they were gut-wrenching—but they were also some of the most meaningful in my life, and they connect me to his family forever.
When we read about Jesus wandering around the Sea of Galilee, Samaria, and Jerusalem, he doesn’t seem to be having a good time. Semi-dedicated and dim-witted disciples surround him. He hangs out with the leprous, the blind, the sick, the afflicted, the poor, the marginalized, and the oppressed. He spars with grouchy Pharisees. He meets his demise because of the Sanhedrin and Romans. He feels abandoned on the cross. Unhappiness surrounds him. But he was engaged in meaningful work.
Or, as the book of James reminds us, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27). That’s hard, often unpleasant, and unhappy work; but it’s meaningful.
One February afternoon, my brother called to let me know that my dad was about to die—a dad I hadn’t seen in more than thirty years. The reason for the estrangement is a long and sordid tale, but I decided to say good-bye to him—even though I didn’t serve my dad by visiting him; even though I benefited no one by being there. It was a gutting yet meaningful experience to see him lying there, incapacitated, mostly incoherent, hidden by an oxygen mask, and breathing laboriously. It brought me face-to-face with feelings I had repressed for more than thirty years: guilt and rejection, life and death, mistakes and redemption. Standing beside my dad’s hospital bed made me ask questions about fathers and sons, parents and children. There was no happy ending, no warm embrace, no service rendered. He didn’t even know I was there. It was one of the most unhappy moments in my life. And yet, visiting my father was a meaningful experience. It lives with me, shapes me, influences me—for good and ill.
Of course, what we find meaningful is personal and subjective, and it’s not an either/or situation. “Meaningful” rides on a continuum; we should always talk in terms of “more or less.” My examples are extreme and sad, but they don’t have to be. We may engage in meaningful activities every day, from reading a book to a child to calling a friend we haven’t spoken with in a long while. Eating a BLT with the right person can be meaningful for a teenager. And yes, while we may be happier eating an apple than interacting with our kids, our children do provide us with countless opportunities for deep meaning, however vexing those experiences may be.
Leaving the pursuit of a happy life behind and instead pursuing a meaningful life will help us choose whether we spend money on toys for Christmas or on taking a trip together. Asking if a choice is meaningful may help us decide whether to buy ourselves yet another pair of shoes or to donate the money to the Latimer House. Asking about meaning might help the high school graduate make beneficial decisions. Do the books we read, the films we watch, the events we attend merely make us happy, or are they meaningful?
Meaning doesn’t flee, vanish, evaporate, or fade. Let’s say good-bye to the idea that following gospel principles will make us happy, and instead embrace the search for meaning, however sad, disappointing, uncomfortable, or disruptive that search may be.