S1|E1: Love and Happiness

[Bell] Follow your dream, they say. But most often our dreams lead to nothing more than frustration and failure. Look out for number one, they say. But you can have it all and still be miserable. Get over it, they say. But pain suppressed is still pain. Be yourself, they say. But sometimes it's hard to know who you really are. We all want answers to the ultimate questions. Can they really be found? I'm Gabriel Miller and this is the purpose of your life. [Music] Does life even have a purpose? Something deep down inside you knows it does. The philosophy is out there that will try to tell you life is meaningless and we're all a product of random processes. But you know that just doesn't feel right. That inner investigator in you longs to find the answer. How could random processes possibly cause that thing to naw at you? If you crave meaning, how can life be meaningless? Simple answer, it's not. It has meaning and your life has a purpose. To ask the question of life's purpose is to immediately bring up the question of God. We'll actually be talking quite a bit about God. We have to, because God is the only way to make sense of a search for ultimate purpose. If there is no God, then you and I came into existence by random chance. In that scenario, by definition, life has no purpose. The fact that your gut tells you just the opposite means you know deep down there is a God. If you have a purpose, if life has meaning, there had to be a creator to give it meaning. There's simply no external meaning if it's all random. And there simply must be external meaning if a God is behind it all. There's a God and you know it. And the search for purpose is intertwined with the search for God. Find God and you've got a chance at finding purpose. Without finding God, no chance at finding purpose. This is the starting point and there's really no other option. During my time in grad school, I had a side hustle playing saxophone in an R&B band. We had a pretty good time. The people sure seemed to enjoy our music and we enjoyed making it. One of the classics we covered was the old Al Green song Love and Happiness. I think it expressed some partial truth. Happiness is when you feel really good about somebody, so one line goes. I like how happiness is tied to relationship in that sentence. And not just everything we try to do for ourselves. But if we step back and examine the concepts of love and happiness, I'm convinced our culture really has a terrible idea of what these things are and how they're supposed to work. Let's take Love first. The ancient Greeks had four different words to describe what we only have one word for. They had a word for the love we feel for friends. They had another word for the love we feel for family. Then they had a different word for romantic love. And finally, they had a word that transcended them all. Agape, the kind of love characterized by selflessness in action. If you ask most people today to define love, not many would give you a definition like selflessness in action. Or if it's the verb, preferring others to self. Now, when we're looking for love, we're looking for self. We're looking out for ourselves. We're looking to satisfy our own needs and wants. How many people do you know who have as the primary characteristic they're looking for in a mate? Someone to whom they can give of themselves. That's crazy talk in our world. But that's agape. Agape love has the humility to give everyone else the same allowances we give ourselves. Agape love tries to see the best in everyone. It focuses on their potential, not on their failures. Agape love sacrifices its own ways, methods, and desires. Agape love recognizes that everyone is wounded, imperfect, and even helpless without God. In other words, agape love breeds compassion. Compassion for your spouse, compassion for your children, compassion for your parents, compassion for your siblings, compassion for your co-workers, compassion for your friends, compassion for the random people who cross your path. Compassion for your enemies. Life begins to take on more meaning as we stop focusing on ourselves and begin thinking about others and acting with the best interest of others in mind. Selflessness can be tiring, but it's overwhelmingly rewarding. When we serve others, we recognize that we are a part of something bigger and we begin to get a glimpse of what fulfilling purpose looks like. And that brings joy. Joy not to be confused with happiness. The world says do everything you can do to be happy. Work more to get more money to buy more things. Things make us happy. Delay starting a family to pursue career so you can be happy. The right career will make you happy. Up your social media game so you can get more likes and followers. Likes and followers make us happy. Happiness in our culture is me doing things for me. And that kind of happiness just doesn't translate into joy. That deeper thing. Culture's idea of happiness is surface level. On the other hand, life that fulfills purpose results in joy and that's deep. Now I'm not against happy. I'm happy when I eat strawberry hog and does ice cream. I was happy when I bought a new car recently. I'm happy when I get to watch my favorite TV shows or when my favorite teams win. I'm happy with happy. It's a great feeling. But it can change quickly. It's here one minute and gone the next. And nowadays it seems to be gone much more often than not. I walked through the mall recently. I'm not a mall regular and when I do go I'm want to mission for something specific. I'm not in observation mode. But on this particular day I noticed something. You know how throughout a department store they have big pictures of people modeling the clothes or other products that they're selling. Well one of these caught my attention and then another and another. I saw something in all of these pictures I'd never seen before. All of the models were smiling. Big smiles with all their teeth showing. It caught my attention because I'm used to seeing these models with very serious, sultry looks on their faces. Well it doesn't take a genius to figure out what's going on here. Whatever's in those photos is what they're trying to sell. And whatever they're trying to sell is what the people don't currently have. And one time they tried to sell sultry, rich, swath and debonair. Now they're trying to sell happiness. If you buy this product you will be happy. So happy you'll smile big enough to show all your teeth. They're selling it because they know people don't have it. We're living in one of the unhappiest times in human history. We have everything in our fingertips, opportunity and abundance like never before. And yet happiness is in short supply. But it doesn't have to be that way. Look, this podcast is not about steps you can take to be happier. You don't need just another voice in your life telling you you should be happy and here's how to be happy. This podcast is about fulfilling the purpose of your life. But there is a correlation between fulfilled purpose and increased happiness. [Music] We tend to think of happiness as contingent on our circumstances, specifically positive circumstances. But happiness can actually be demonstrated even when circumstances aren't ideal. And this is easier to do if we have that agape love that we can share with others. Because even when we don't feel particularly happy, our mindset of preferring others to self means that we can choose to display happiness for the benefit of others. We've all been in that situation where we're feeling down and then someone walks in the room with a smile or a joke or a kind word and our mood suddenly shifts. We can be that person when we operate according to the principle of agape. Well, let's go back to the idea of joy. Happiness is surface level and a response to circumstances. Joy is under the surface and it's not swayed by circumstances. You can't fake joy and you can't even really choose joy. Joy comes from fulfillment. When you know you are serving a purpose, the result is joy. You can dislike your job, but if you know that job is where you're supposed to be, if it's providing a living for your family or if it's preparing you for something else down the road, you can be content even though you dislike it. The joy comes from the purpose behind it, even though there's no happiness coming from the execution of it. You can wish you had more money, but if you're saving for the future or giving to people less fortunate, you can be content even though you wish you had more. The joy comes from the purpose behind how you are allocating that money, even though there's no happiness coming from being able to spend it on yourself right now. You can be annoyed or even angry with your spouse or your children or your parents, and yet still be content under the surface because you know that the day-to-day bickering or run-ins are nothing in comparison to the companionship and legacy of family. The joy comes from the purpose of these relationships, which is long term, even though there's definitely no happiness when you fuss and fight. Joy looks past the negative of now to the positive of then. It sees the bigger picture. It's anchored in things that go beyond circumstances. It's derived from purpose fulfilled and it brings rest. The world's ideas of love and happiness, the world's approach to love and happiness, will never lead to fulfilled purpose, but a life that fulfills its purpose will be marked by the true love called agape and the deep happiness called joy. We are most fulfilled, we are most joyful, when we put others first, when we prefer others to self, when we think about others and allow those thoughts to be translated into selfless acts. Is all that easier said than done? Absolutely. It's really hard to live selflessly. That's because, contrary to popular opinion, human beings are not basically good, we are fundamentally bad. We'll say more about that later. But there's another reason it's hard to live selflessly. It's because life carries great obstacles to love and happiness. Perhaps chief among them, a little thing we call pain. Why do we have to endure pain? Does it have a purpose? And can it help lead us to ours? Let's talk about that next time. [Music] [Music] [Music]