Jul 17 Fri
Why do I desire to be happy?
In the depths of the human spirit, we find a longing for happiness that points to the hope of a home, of a definitive homeland. We are earthly, but we long for the eternal; we long for God —a God whom we can know with certainty as the origin and end of the universe and as the supreme good, starting from the world and the human person.
“Man is made to be happy as a bird is made to fly.” All men and women seek happiness, their own good, and direct their lives in the way that seems best-suited to achieve it. Being able to enjoy human goods that perfect and enrich us makes us happy.
But in this life, happiness is always marred by a shadow. Not only because after obtaining something good we can get used to it, but more basically, because no created good is capable of fulfilling our longing for happiness and because all created goods are short-lived.
Growing in our knowledge of the world does not exhaust our capacity to know or our questions; we can always come to know new things and understand them in greater depth.
And something similar happens with our capacity to love: no created good satiates us completely and forever; we can always love more deeply and love better things. And somehow, we feel spurred towards this: achieving new goals makes us happy.
We try to attain this in our own lives and get depressed when we don’t achieve it. We have a “longing for complete fulfillment.” All this is a sign of greatness, of the fact that there is something infinite in us that transcends every concrete reality that is part of our life.
The world, however, is temporary. Deep down, we realize that material goods sometimes promise us happiness that they can only give for a while.
We find, then, two different types of human longings that point to our “hunger for transcendence.” Our experiences of a transcendent good awaken in us a “longing for plenitude” (of being, truth, goodness, beauty, love).
And our experiences of evil, of the loss of these goods, awaken in our heart a “longing for salvation” (survival, righteousness, justice, peace). These experiences of transcendence leave a longing for a reality beyond this world.
Therefore, in the depths of the human spirit, a dissatisfaction is present, a longing for happiness that points to a secret hope: the hope of a home, of a definitive homeland in which the dream of eternal happiness, of a love that lasts forever, will be fulfilled. We are earthly, but we long for the eternal.
This longing does not in itself form the basis of a natural religion, but is rather a “pointer” to God. The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will we find the truth and happiness we can never stop searching for.