Happiness and Purpose
What is happiness? Most definitions are essentially circular. They involve the related concepts of joy, pleasure, cheerfulness, gaiety, and merriment - all subjective and hard to independently define. Happiness is also a polyseme, having multiple related meanings to different people in different contexts, further complicating a firm, standalone definition.
Aristotle, a student of Plato who lived 2,300 years ago, and one of the greatest thinkers to ever live, spent a lot of time thinking about happiness. He saw it as the chief goal in one’s life: that all other pursuits - career, power, material things, friendship, family, etc. - are in service of achieving it. He came to believe that happiness is the most fundamental effort any person undertakes - the only thing we seek for its own sake, everything else being but a means to achieve it.
In a work he named after his son Nicomachus, perhaps as a guidebook on life, perhaps as a way to say ‘son, here are some lessons on a good life that I’d like you to know,’ Aristotle discusses at length his so-called Nicomachean Ethics, and develops an extensive theory on happiness, flourishing, and friendship.
Aristotle’s perspective is that a happy life is one in which the person lives the life they were meant to: the one in which a person’s given skills and resources are deployed to the greatest effect, that that knowledge comes only from deep contemplation and introspection, and that all elements in one’s life should seek balance between extremes - his so-called Mean. Similar to Buddha’s Middle Way, The Mean is the idea that we all have the capacity for extreme behaviors (selfishness and charity, brashness and cowardice, adoration and hate), that these extremes are different for each of us, and that virtue is found at the balancing point of these contrasting extremes.
Importantly, and somewhat surprisingly, out of the ten books of Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle dedicated two books to friendship. He ultimately conveys that internal happiness (derived by virtue) is empty in the absence of deep and meaningful friendship (translating one’s virtues into character). And he divides friendship into three classes: utility, pleasure, and pursuit of good.
The first two types are of lower stature because a utility friendship exists to use another for some aim, and a pleasure friendship is one that is ultimately about stimulating the self, so can easily be discarded when the pleasure ends. The third, the pursuit of good friendship, is the “perfect” form, because both people are pursuing the best nature of the other, helping them achieve happiness, or acting together to advance some external good. I would argue that this conception extends more broadly to all of our relationships in life.
(For another take on friendship, one that transformed the way I conceive of my own relationships, read the philosopher and poet David Whyte piece on Friendship)
Why Am I Writing About Happiness in the Year-End Letter (2021/2022)?
This past year, with so much struggle in society, disruptions to global commerce, inflation fears, the fracturing of our politics, the repeated failures of our institutions despite tremendous scientific successes, the many challenges faced by our company (along with the many successes), headwinds to our team’s physical and mental health, the loss of life amongst our team’s loved ones, and my own personal challenges, I kept coming back to thinking about what really matters. What is the point of our collective effort? What rises above the noise?
I believe, ultimately, it is about happiness. Both our own personal happiness and improving the happiness of others. What is more virtuous? What is a life better lived?
So how do I define happiness?
Here’s where I’ve landed: Sustained happiness is a contrast to chosen struggle.
The happiest people I’ve met in my life are those who have faced great challenges. The vibrancy and self-assured satisfaction of life seems to be most on display in places where people have little material wealth. In people with little, who work hard every day to sustain life, yet seem to share a deep sense of happiness.
If your calibration point for happiness is observing others on Instagram, the probability of you being happy yourself is slim-to-none. Similarly, if you have lived a life of only ladders and no snakes, there is no true calibration for happiness. A better calibration point, I’d argue, is digging a ditch. Or changing an infirm elderly person’s diaper. Or teaching someone a new skill. Or forgiving someone who has wronged you.
Without the abyss, without facing the shadow self, there’s no possibility that you, the hero of your story, can ascend to the higher plane upon returning from the journey. Struggle defines being an artist, a writer, an engineer, a scientist, all intellectual pursuits, and the intellectual act of problem solving itself, whether it’s a turn of phrase or solving a complex technical problem.
In this framing, it is not the achievement of one’s goals, or thinking or philosophizing alone, that leads to happiness. Instead, happiness is achieved in the journey - in the actual doing. It is the very act of trying, of struggling, of sustained Sisyphean effort that leads to happiness. Finetuned, it is the struggle itself that defines happiness as its opposite.
And as Aristotle points out with the concept of The Mean, it is the balance of extremes and abilities in the individual that defines the appropriate struggle. That happiness is achieved in living the life that each of us is meant to live based on our skills, resources, and virtue deployed.
Objective Happiness: A life well-lived is one that is lived for more than one’s self
As I contemplated this concept of happiness as contrast to struggle, it also became clear that happiness as the chief goal means it’s an entirely subjective affair unless it’s an objectively positive-sum game. That is, if each and every one of us is playing a zero-sum or negative-sum game by working solely towards a selfish goal of happiness, then the world will, in total, be less happy than if no one was working toward ultimate happiness.
So it follows that an objectively well-lived life is one that improves the world by virtue of the life being lived. No matter how small an increment, if your life leaves the world better than you found it, it is an objectively good life.
If you die tomorrow, is the world better off because you existed? It’s a simple yet profound question.
It’s not a challenge. Rather, it seems that if we simply live our daily lives in a way that is something less than selfish, the world will be a better place. I’d argue that all human progress since the dawn of civilization is due largely to individuals living lives that are geared more for their fellow human than for themselves. What is the best way to ensure you’re on that path?
Pursue happiness by choosing struggle over comfort, by choosing efforts that align with your superpowers, by forming relationships and teams that amplify those abilities, and by doing each of these things for the good of others.
Be water, my friend
Empty your mind.
Be formless, shapeless, like water.
You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.
You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle.
You put it into a teapot, it becomes the teapot.
Now water can flow or it can crash.
Be water, my friend.
Bruce Lee is famous for Kung Fu movies. But he’s also famous for his own personal brand of martial arts and his philosophy. Being able to flow, remaining formless and adaptable, is the definition of thinking zero mass. Becoming the shape of the problem or the solution defines demanding ‘yes, if….’ Having the ability to adapt to all forms is only possible if we build aggressively for divergence. And flowing and crashing is part of life, but staying the course and supporting friends on their journey defines leading with love.