I don’t know about you, but I am really tired of going through my mail. Every day it seems I get at least one offer from some company for a credit card. If I wanted to, I could be in debt up to my eyeballs. All I’d have to do is say “yes” to every offer and then charge up each card to its limit. Granted, I could buy some really great stuff. I just love electronic gadgets, so Best Buy and Circuit City could come to know be by my first name if I was so inclined.

Of course, I’m not so inclined. I’ve worked hard to build up my business and my good credit, and I am not going to do anything to jeopardize that. However, I’ve known quite a few people who don’t have that same reticence. For them, another credit card means more things; more things mean more things to make them happy. Happiness, for them, is not a pursuit but a purchase, even if they don’t have the money.

On the other hand I’ve known a few people who actually do have the money. So, they use that money to buy and spend and consume, with each purchase hoping they’ll fel better about life, about themselves. These people have a hole, a rather large, expensive hold, being filled with things.

Happiness isn’t so much a destination as it is a filling up of that void in their lives. Cram enough furnishings, cars, trips, jewelry, gadgets, toys, and clothing into the hold, and certainly someday it will be all filled up. There’s just one problem: the hole isn’t sealed at the bottom. Instead, whatever is packed in eventually seeps out the bottom through use, disappointment, or disinterest. Luckily though, through the media, they’re kept up to date on the next great thing that will, surely this time, pack in the hole.

SOURCE: Chapter 1, “Detours On the Road to Happiness,” in Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

I love the first sentence of the first chapter of Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Life. “It’s not about you.”

This sentence is in complete contradiction to the media’s rather strident assertion to the contrary. In order to find happiness, the media claims that it is all about you — your needs, your desires, your wants, and your rights. The media explains that all of these things must be fulfilled — needs, desires, wants, rights — in order for you to be truly happy. It obligingly communicates what you have to do to get your needs, desires, wants, and rights filled and how to battle against all those forces arrayed against you achieving them.

Life, then, and happiness are not so much a pursuit as they are a struggle. People in your life are either for or against you in your struggle.

For a narcissist, people are either friend or foe.

The media is the opposite of Rick Warren. The media tells us, “It is all about you. You have a right to have every need, desire, and wish granted. Whatever you must do, whatever you must sacrifice, whoever you must coerce and cajole, is open season and justifiable. After all, it (fill in the blank) is your right. Happiness is an unalienable right promised to you in the Declaration of Independence as a part of your birthright as an American and as a human being, so whatever you need to do to get it is reasonable and understandable. Put yourself first in order to be happy, and don’t take a backseat to anyone until you’ve attained the happiness you seek. It’s your right. You deserve it. Nobody else is going to do it foryou.”

The single-minded focus of the narcissist is very much akin to the single-minded focus of many I work with at The Center, the anorexic. Both are absolutely absorbed with forcing the shape of the world into their own box. For the anorexic, it’s irrelevant that drinking diet sodas and eating only a banana a day will cause irreparable physical and psychological damage. That reality doesn’t fit into the controlled world they seek.

Reality is irrelevant; intent is everything.

For the narcissist, it’s irrelevant that a total focus on self-seeking behaviors will cause irreparable social and relational damage. That reality doesn’t fit into the comfortable world they seek. Again, reality is irrelevant; intent is everything. For both, everything that happens around them, to them, for them, about them is only ever about them. AndI can tell you, tragically, happiness doesn’t enter the picture.

SOURCE: Chapter 1, “Detours On the Road to Happiness,” in Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

I don’t see this one as much as the others mentioned because, frankly, the amount of time and energy it takes to pull off the others doesn’t leave a tremendous amount of resources for this one. However, I have seen this from time to time and so feel compelled to discuss it here. It seems that if a person eschews the others talked about so far (education, work, love, children) it often is so they can pursue a cause as their road to happiness. This could be a religious cause, a political cause, or a social cause. Often, it’s a very good thing in and of itself.

The danger comes when working for the cause is no longer sufficient to bring about happiness. Instead, happiness is measured by the person’s definition of progress in the cause. In other words, because you’re putting in so much time and energy, because you’ve sacrificed relationships and career in order to pursue the cause, it had better start producing results.

Causes are notoriously slow movers. Fighting world hunger, promoting peaceful coexistence, winning the world for Christ, ending poverty, exposing oppression, convincing the other side of how right you are — none of these are movie-of-the-week kind of endeavors. They take the time and, often, progress is glacial. If after time the results are not what the person perceives they should be, years of happiness can dissipate, leaving only disappointment and disillusionment in their wake.

Causes are also notoriously enmeshed with charismatic, persuasive individuals. The leaders can be political, cultural, or religious. Larger than life, these figures are often found to have feet of clay. These clay feet cause the strong and imperious leader to crumple. When they come crashing down, their followers can get crushed underneath. When the leader falls, the followers tend to blend back into the crowd, angry, weary, and hardened. One thing they seldom are is happy about it.

SOURCE: Chapter 1, “Detours On the Road to Happiness,” in Happy for the Rest of Your Life by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.

As you may have seen or participated in, I held a book giveaway last month asking anyone and everyone to answer a series of questions on happiness. It was an especially popular giveaway of my book Happy for the Rest of Your Life and received many touching responses. But there is one in particular told in such detail and at such length that it makes the perfect blog post with which to begin the holiday season.

In response to my question, “What memory makes you happy, and why?” Sharon M. wrote this:

It amazes me that in our society (set to 70 mph) it seems we cannot even take a breath, before the Mega-Merchants start rushing us all forward.

I need to be still, to remember things most cherished. Two, stand out.

The Christmas I emerged from Texas Children’s hospital, with my 9-year-old son, with the news that I was recieving my Christmas Miracle, and my son would live! I cried with relief and Joy, for days.Crowds were rushing, much as they are beginning to now, and I was conflicted — euphoric on one hand, and lost as to my next step, rushing into an Albertson’s store, past a ‘Junkie’ shaking with tremors, right in front of the door. People were irritated by him, throwing their pennies into his guitar case with looks of disgust. This was Nashville, Tennessee, so his skilled but shaking guitar picking was something heard on every street corner.

That same year I would remember the Christmas Season in a different light, from that time forward.

Out of nowhere, yet somewhere familiar, I heard an inner voice telling me to give him more than pennies. It was a huge amount for me, and I quarreled with my own emotionally- charged heart. No, it couldn’t be the voice of a Holy God, just my emotions run-amuck at Christmas. And just as I argued, the unction came so loud and large, that I could not miss it.

I whirled around with my son in tow and plopped a rather large bill into the velvet case. It seemed, if only for a moment, that time stood still. The picking stopped, and the man looked straight up to the sky, crying with great sobs.

Shaking and hot tears streaming, he said, ‘Oh Father God, I haven’t gone too far, you’re still there, Oh my God, You’re still there.”

And the next thing I knew, he was picking Christmas hymns and tunes: ‘Did I know this one, did I know that one…?’ Intermittantly, he was sobbing as he began to sing, and then asked if I wanted to join him. My son took the lead, and the next moments we were sitting on the wet asphalt right at the entrance to the store…and singing!

People began to circle around us and join in. The rushing stopped, and for nearly half an hour we were all caught and held fast in that wonder that really is Christmas.

I told the man, that he’d best put his money into his pocket. 

It was time to go, but I will never forget, passing a man, caught by his addictions, and yet one of God’s own! Wow, what Grace, and what wonder. I saw it, I heard it, I sat and watched as the vortex drew more and more people to join in song…and to be still.

I saw the true meaning of Christmas, there on the asphalt, and I will never forget that sight for as long as I live!

I believe that for the first time, I really understood. My son would live, this man who had lost his way, heard from God in a tangible way, and we are all offered that moment of Saving Grace, because A Living Loving God really came to this earth and offered us himself.

What a gift!

Yes, I need time to be still and to remember what Memory(s) make me Happy, and to revel in them.