The Pursuit of Happiness

Working at a college, Sam and I encounter the "products" of many different approaches to parenting. Some of the students we work with are so conscientious, thoughtful, interesting, talented, hardworking, original, fun, and earnest that your desire for life to treat them well could just about break your heart. Then there are a few that are spoiled, lazy, entitled, or disrespectful, and they break your heart in a different way. The parents of both kinds of students, inasmuch as I've dealt with them, seem equally convinced that they've done the best by their children that they could.

I think a big difference between the two kinds of students we see are those whose parents raise them to be "good" and those who raise them to be happy. Both sets of parents probably want their children to be both good and happy, but the difference seems to be which priority they set. Ironically, the students who are trying to be and do good seem much happier than the students who mainly want to be happy. That latter group of students often seems frustrated that the rest of the world is not willing to accommodate their expectations for their own happiness and ease.

So, I don't know. I want my baby to be happy--but I really want her to be good. For me, as I think about it, for her to be good doesn't mean being accommodating or goody-goody or self-righteous . . . I think it means having and following the internal desire to please God, nurturing the ability to listen to and courageously follow one's conscience. Maybe faith is believing that a certain kind of goodness, however inconvenient or difficult to live out, will bring authentic happiness.

And anyway, sometimes I think happiness is one of those things that you really only experience when you are focused on something else. It's like something you can see most clearly out of your peripheral vision--something that, when you turn to look at it, slips out of view, until you focus again on what's big or really present in your line of sight, and then, there it is again, the corona around all that you see.