The pursuit of happiness
Ilived years believing that man existed to be happy and I wrote several columns about that out of my personal experience or from the experience of others. But a book was published lately showing that if we make our goal in life to be happy, and work towards it, we may end up feeling lonely and become miserable, and so it is much better to work towards making our life have a meaning. The search for happiness only through concentrating on satisfying our desires will only lead to feeling empty, while if we live a life that has a meaning through serving others and helping them with giving and not taking, then this will make a difference.
One of the differences between seeking happiness or to live a life that has a meaning lies in the difficulty of the second type, because it includes sacrifice and giving, whether it was money, time or emotion. So life is not for us to be happy, rather we make it meaningful and this will make us happier at the end. If we studied reasons that pushed many to commit suicide, we would find that the majority of them did not complain of misery, rather they suffered from emptiness, and their lives did not have a meaning.
That was mentioned in the book of American researcher Emily Esfahani Smith, in which she said that one finds the goal or meaning of his life, even during the most difficult circumstances, and this gives us the motive to continue living, while seeking happiness that satisfies our desires and wishes will at the end lead to emptiness. Happiness is usually linked with feeling healthy and active, and as we are on the receiving side and this normally does not result in having a meaning for our life because we do not give anything to others.
She said that the millennials became more interested in having a meaning in their lives, so they started looking, in addition to financial return, for what the job means for them when they search for one. This meaning may differ from one person to another, as some are in need of relations that gives them the feeling of belonging, and that there is a need for them, and that their performance has a meaning, so if we wanted those who wish not to continue their life or the misery, then we should make a target for their living and not work to make them happy.
I can say here out of my experience with tens of those who I made interested to find jobs, especially those who were sent by the Management and Government Restructuring Program who have been unemployed for years, most of them are living without a goal or purpose, and they are mostly miserable. This made them less motivated to seek jobs and more disgusted with life, because of the lack of meaning or goal to work towards.