On Happiness and Unhappiness

Here are some things that I wish:

1)I wish there was more to life

2)I wish people everywhere were less lonely

3)I wish my life had one specific grand purpose

Loneliness and the warmth of being are two things that are contradictory, yet paralleled. All of the good to excellent books I’ve read in the last year on the topic of unhappiness have essentially argued, at one point or another, that the way of happiness is to take a deep joy in small, daily things (I think it’s a sign of our modern age by the way that the titles of our Christian books have changed from things like “Contentment” to things like “Holy Unhappiness” - we’ve become both more bleak and more honest).

Aggressively Happy by Joy Clarkson, Holy Unhappiness by Amanda Held Opelt, The Lives We Actually Have by Kate Bowler, and On Getting Out of Bed by Alan Noble, all posit that there is joy in existence itself - that can be found, if we fight for it and look for it. They argue that God created this joy and means for us to find it. These books have many other pieces and brilliant, eloquent expositions of life and the Biblical way, but this piece is mainly what I walked away with.

I think the idea of just being in this world, of existing, as a worthy and valuable and potentially joyful thing, is stunning, and beautiful, and particularly powerful for those of us who struggle with depression. I also think it’s hard to grasp in a daily, concrete way. How to believe it? And if I can believe it, how to apply it? Yet what an ease it would be, what a freedom - for the dreamers and perfectionists of this world. To hang up our mental hats and the voices that scream inside and say “more, more, more, accomplish more; you are unworthy and useless for not having accomplished more already”. It would be magical and miraculous for those voices to dissipate into silence in the bright determined light of living in the present moment and finding it enough.

I think that God intends better for us than to live in the unhappiness of the possible. Which is why He provided the withness - the God with us of Emmanuel, the presence of the Spirit, and the presence of an amazingly beautiful natural world. I think that living in the actual present moment and present life God has given is a way towards, if not happiness, which is often a strong word, but less unhappiness.

Perhaps, in this way, our cups will have the space to let joy in, once unhappiness has retreated.

Soli deo gloria.