Pursuing Excellence, Catching Happiness
Happiness is excellence of activity, not a state of being to chase.
We all want to be happy.
But most of us are not quite sure how to get there.
Usually we think: if I can finish this project, ace this test, get into that college, land this job, marry that person, close this deal, sign the mortgage on that house, put my last child through school, retire early—then I will be happy.
Running the Hedonic Treadmill
This is the trap of hedonic adaptation or the hedonic treadmill. We keep running and running hoping that the prize is just around the bend. Prize in hand, we will be happy. The trouble is that we just keep running. We might attain the prize, only to begin chasing another down the road. Winning one race signs us up for another race. The promotion at work gets more work for us. The bigger house means a new mortgage to pay down. The big bonus means we must work harder for an even bigger bonus.
This approach to life is extremely future oriented. And, to be sure, that is not entirely a bad thing. Remember the marshmallow experiment? Children who were able to delay gratification by eating one marshmallow were given two marshmallows a few minutes later. The children who were able to delay gratification, and enjoy the two marshmallows at a later point, generally did better in school and life than children who chose not to wait. But the problem with delayed gratification is that, well, it’s delayed. If you delay gratification your entire life, needlessly, what’s the point?
I’m not advocating for hedonism. My point, rather, is this: What if happiness and life is not about gritting it out? What if it’s not about white knuckling it until you make it? What if happiness is in the doing itself, in the process, not in the outcomes?
Being Happy vs. Doing Happiness
Happiness is a funny word.
As a noun, it sounds like a state of being, something out there in the world that we either attain or accomplish, once and for all. We don’t often think of happiness in terms of a verb: to happy or happy-ing. What would it mean to “do” happiness? I think that “doing” happiness is a more helpful way of thinking about the goal of our lives than “being” happy. Happiness, I would propose, is an activity, our being-in-act.
Even the attainment of a goal we make sets us up for a kind of doing or activity. The university you enter is another path to doing more reading, writing, thinking. The job you land as a banker is a path to more banking. The family you begin is a path to loving, growing, bonding. Even the vacation you take is really just a ticket to doing something else. Lounging on a beach chair in front of the ocean is doing something: watching the waves, noticing the sun on your skin, feeling the sand under your toes.
Even mindfulness meditation is a kind of paradoxical doing by not doing: the doing of mediation is actually mindful awareness of your environment, your body, your breathing. . . Contemplation of the world, of a painting, of a mathematical truth is humanity in act. It is pleasurable because we are fully present in the doing of it.
The only time you’re truly not doing something is when you’re dead. And the next closest time we’re not doing something is when we’re sleeping. But even when you’re sleeping your body is working, repairing tissue, consolidating memories, and so on.
What about the old objection: are we human beings or human doings? On an existential level, we exist as humans, not as cats or dogs. But our lives are perfected in activity, in the expression of our activity, our being-in-act. I think what people mean by this is that we are not simply cogs in a machine. We are not merely a means of production, “human resources” for some industrial or financial output. True enough. But I would argue that even the moments of simply being—mindfulness, leisure, rest, communion, contemplation—are a kind of deeper activity, simply in another order.
The question then is this: how do we do life, live life, with excellence?
Excellence of Activity as the Path to Happiness
Ancient Greek philosophy found one answer to this question in arete (ah-re-TAY). On a basic level, arete means excellence of any sort. The excellence of a fire is its heat. The excellence of a knife is its sharpness. The excellence of a car is its speed and reliability. The excellence of a coat or sweater is its comfort and warmth.
There are distinctive and particular human excellences in every domain of life. If you have arete when it comes to preparing food, you would be an excellent chef. If you have arete in playing the piano, you would be an excellent musician. If you have arete when it comes to writing poems, you would be an excellent poet.
The Latin word that came to translate arete was virtus. English-speaking writers historically translated both arete and virtus into virtue. While virtue is a cognate word with virtus, that translation, in our day, has become a little misleading. For virtus in Latin originally meant power. To have arete or virtus is to have excellence or power: that is, the ability to do something really well—with skill, with ease, with joy.
What if we could live all our life with arete, with excellence, with skill? What are the specific excellences required for your specific work, your relationships, your fitness routine, your leisure, your worship? We would undoubtedly live happier lives if we knew the skills of excellence required for living well. It is not so much a matter of being happy. It is a matter of doing happiness, of living well, with excellence.
Happiness is found in the doing of the thing, the intrinsic practice of the activity, like playing tennis, not in the extrinsic outcome, like the prestige you might get for winning a match or the money you might gain through sponsorships. So do the thing well, with excellence, for its own sake, and you’ll be more on the path to happiness.
Excellence and Adversity: Failure, Suffering, Limitation
All well and good, you say, but what about our sufferings, failures, and limitations?
Strangely enough, there is an excellent way to suffer and an excellent way to prosper. There is an excellent way to fail and an excellent way to succeed. There is an excellent way to manage your limitations and an excellent way to develop your talents.
We must do what we can to overcome failure, to alleviate suffering, to adapt to our limits. But you can still live a good life in the midst of failure. You can live a good life in the midst of suffering. You can live a good life in the midst of limits. You can live with excellence in the midst of suffering, failure, and limitation. It is not easy. It is not glorious. It may even seem impossible at times for me, here, now. But at least in principle, these adversities can be occasions for living with excellence. In fact, any path to happiness worth it’s salt must confront these common realities.
Failure. The whole phenomenon of FEFO (fail early, fail often) is now an entrepreneurial principle. Fail early so that you know how to move on. Thomas Edison is the proverbial example here: 999 failures become the path to the one solution for the filament of the incandescent lightbulb. The same is true about “pivoting” from one enterprise to another to find what works. So, yes: fail well!
Suffering. I’m usually a sorry sight when it comes to suffering. I can complain about the smallest headache, lack of sleep, or stubbed toe. These are trivialities in the grand scheme of things. But what would it look like to suffer well even in those little things? I would undoubtedly be happier and more present to others. And what about the really big sufferings of life: disability, illness, loss, death? What if we could suffer even these well, with excellence?
Limitations. We all face limitations: in health, strength, intelligence, skill, resources, connections, and so on. But we can still develop excellence in the midst of these limitations. If you can be the best in some field, whatever that means, that’s great. We can rightly enjoy those moments of success. But I think the larger goal in life, generally speaking, is not to be “the best” in an artificial comparison. It is live your life well, as you can, with your limitations and priorities. It is to discover how you can make your gifts a service to others. More importantly, our limitations, big and small, offer us a gift, the reminder that human life is not measured by outputs and success but ultimately by love and sacrifice.
An Invitation to Excellence
So, how do we fail well, suffer well, and manage our limits? And how do we build lasting relationships, care for our physical and emotional health, eagerly shoulder our responsibilities, enjoy meaningful friendships, and flourish at work? How do we live a life that is excellent, in all of its ordinary glory and splendor?
I am obviously still looking for answers, but I think these are questions worth asking, for all of us, especially in light of perspectives that we can find in the worlds of social science, philosophy, theology, the fine arts, and all the fields of human inquiry that have something to say about human excellence. Finding the target to hit might seem like a small accomplishment, but it is still the first step to hitting it.