I recently listened to a group of people describe their aspirations for life, and was particularly intrigued by how often people said they wanted to be “happy”. Because people generally tend to hope for things they feel they lack, it was only natural for me to assume that they felt they were not happy at the moment. But they really seemed like very happy people to me, and so I proceeded to ask them what their conception of happiness was, and why it was that they didn’t think they were happy at the moment.

As it would turn out, their impression of a happy person was one who had a sustained, continuous emotional “high”. A happy person, in their opinion, never had bad days. Nothing terrible ever happened to them. Even if it did, would manage to surmount it, put smiles on their faces, and… maintain the emotional high.

I found this particularly interesting, because, for some reason, culture seems to prize this interpretation of happiness as the supreme virtue. People who seem to be at an all-time high are admired, even venerated at times. The inevitable consequence is that there is a strong emphasis on comfort, an overt avoidance of experiences that are not directly pleasurable ¹. Many people deny the “negative” emotions like guilt, anger, or embarrassment, they feel, because acknowledging them, and actually experiencing them implies that they have fallen short of some standard.

Most ancient literature indicates that people understood that life has a somewhat tragic nature; that suffering is an integral part of the human experience. As such, the emphasis was not so much to be happy at all costs, but to find ways to derive meaning from our suffering, to muster the inner strength to cope with the difficulties we faced in life. While there is no evidence to support that the nature of the human experience has changed much, one only has to look at the messages coming from contemporary religion, psychology and literature to see that the emphasis has shifted considerably.

It is understandable that people want to be happy all the time: happiness feels good, unhappiness feels bad. What is not as understandable, though, is why we have come to think, and even expect, that we should be happy all the time, or that emotional highs are some sort of cure-all states for the issues of life.

For the sake of argument, let’s consider the following hypothetical situation: We walk into a room, and find a woman who just miscarried. What do we tell her? To find the silver lining? To think positively? That everything would be fine? Or do we curse life, because something tragic happened to her? Would we find it normal if she was talking about finding a silver lining, or thinking positively about that situation?

Most people would not think about situations as dramatic as the one I just described. What we do instead is wish that such things never happen to us. Which, of course, is still understandable. Only that those things do happen, and, in many cases, we have little control over who they happen to. And while we shouldn’t spend our lives preparing for such things to happen to us, it is only reasonable that we develop systems of thinking that can tolerate at least mild forms of discomfort, and which can handle the unfortunate things that will inevitably happen to us in life.

Now, until this point, the focus has been on the tragic nature of life in the sense of what happens to us. However, we are all actors in the world, and our actions have consequences. Sometimes those consequences are good, but many times, our actions have negative consequences. Isn’t it normal to feel some sort of grief, or remorse, when we violate our moral codes? Are we certain that a world without grief, or sorrow, would be a comfortable place to live in? What if a person could rape or kill somebody, and cope with life by simply “thinking positive” about their actions? ²

Again, the previous illustration may be quite extreme, but it illustrates a point. It is unrealistic to imagine that we can go through life without offending any other person; that all of our actions on the people around us would simply be harmless. We expect other people to feel negative emotions when their actions are not what we want, but feel bad about having similar feelings about our actions. Why then, would we expect another person to feel grief for their actions, yet exempt ourselves from the same fate?

Regardless of what a person’s beliefs are as to the origins of human emotion, it is clear that the full spectrum of emotion, each and every emotion known to humankind is present for a particular reason. Focusing only on one emotional state, whether it is happiness or unhappiness, results in a life which is flat and one-dimensional, lacking in any real depth. We can only construct full meaning in life when we accept, and learn to take advantage of the full spectrum of our humanity, and make use of all the emotions that we feel.

Anger signals to us that there has been a violation of our rights, or an encroachment of personal space. Remorse and guilt tell us that we have violated our beliefs or moral code, and that we need to change either our actions, or the beliefs which govern our lives. Sadness prompts us to slow down and reevaluate the directions that our lives are taking. Embarrassment signals the onset of humiliation.

I could go on and on, but it is clear that each of these “negative” emotions prompts us to take some form of action, and to contemplate depths of our lives which the average one of us does not on a regular basis. The person who claims to be happy all the time, or brushes off any negative feelings in the pursuit of perpetual euphoria, never takes time to act on these emotions, and to partake of the rich benefits to life they can offer.

Of course, it goes without saying that perpetual anger, grief, guilt or sadness are no more beneficial than perpetual “happiness”. They are just as, or even more harmful. The purpose of this essay is not to denigrate happiness… Not at all. Happiness is great. However, it is not the entirety of the human experience, and should not be purported as such. There is no one state of being for every human being. There are in fact a myriad of them; we should learn to make the best out of them all.

There is now the inevitable question as to what should be pursued, if happiness is as unattainable as described. The answer is twofold: Firstly, what psychologist Tod Kashdan calls “wholeness”: the ability to use all of one’s psychological gifts, be comfortable with being both positive and negative, and therefore draw from the full range of emotion in order to make the best of life. Secondly, the ancient Greek concept of “arête”: excellence in mind, body and spirit; the use of all of one’s ability to fulfill life’s purpose and leave a real and lasting legacy.