We're at our best when united in a worthy effort

We in the United States live the most pampered lives on the planet. Yet, given all of our bounty, we are not that happy.

With our cars and computers, gizmos and playthings, with an array of food, drink and materialism that would shame emperors and kings, why are so many of us unable to taste the zest of life?

Friends have told me they were happiest when they had almost nothing except the struggle for survival. Some who remembered the Great Depression often told me their family bonds and simple joys were strongest at that dark time. Yet others have said that period was unrelieved misery. There is more than one reason, they tell me, that it was called the Depression.

Some poor people who battle each day for scraps of food and hints of shelter seem content, or at least resigned; others don't. Some wealthy individuals rage in impotent misery, turning to any mind- numbing diversion, while others find joy in each day.

Apparently, happiness has little to do with struggle or riches.

For some, religious worship is a pathway to bliss, for others it's a guilty anchor of repression. Many pray, many meditate, many do nothing.

Apparently, happiness has little to do with a belief in God.

Thousands find joy in joining a work force, a team, a club - something greater than the sole ego. Others cannot lose track of their own misery while playing or toiling with their fellow beings. Some delight at quiet contemplation. Others dread solitude.

Apparently, happiness has little to do with other people.

There can be great happiness in the family, in the march and continuity of generations, in sharing bloodlines and traditions, in watching the mystical offset of the young coming in and the old going out. But not all families are happy, and some people achieve contentment and relief only when they have escaped their kin.

Apparently, happiness has little to do with family.

Ours is a material culture and while materialism brings immense rewards and comforts, it also risks a kind of dry rot in the soul. The quest for success drives our entire society but we evidently forget that success has other measures than a balance sheet or fancy purchases. Many people fill their time with shopping therapy. But the more you participate in this squirrel-cage of spending, the more you realize there is more to pay than you thought, when the bill comes due.

Apparently, happiness has little to do with the material world.

Happiness comes from attitude. Yet attitude is shaped perhaps more by genetics than geography, more by the way you are born than by what you learn. Parents often know that some siblings are happier than others, right from birth.

If your basic disposition is sunny, fine. But what if you're lonely, sad, disconnected and rudderless, and nothing works?

Desperate people turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, shopping, self- abasing and mind-numbing behavior, vigorous exercise, fiction and fantasy, and bitterness - bitterness worn as a badge.

Those tools may work, with varying success or harm, but not all the time. They do not work in the lonely nights, when you lie fixated on your pain with terror or anxiety gnawing at your heart.

Modern medicine has raced in with feel-good drugs that ease depression. They often work but they disturb some people by taking their moods into unchosen areas. And because we build up tolerances there comes a time when most drugs aren't as effective as they once were.

So how do you fix a bad attitude when psychological tricks and pharmaceutical potions don't work?

We humans are quirky mixtures of the desire for solitude and the yearning for company. We seem to be at our best when working with others toward some common goal.

If there is one point where the great mystics, religious leaders, psychologists and philosophers agree, it is this: When you work with others and help and reach out to them, you discover a sustaining core worth within yourself.

A solution for grief, for depression, for ennui, is to lose the obsession with self and instead flow into the greater world and the concerns and goals of other people.

This approach may not always work but the wisdom of the ages teaches that it is about the most reliable tool we can hope for. If it doesn't bring happiness it brings perhaps the next best things - a feeling of belonging and an end to isolation.

Copyright 2000 Cowles Publishing Company
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.