You Can Have a Deeper Kind of Happiness

Our post today is about happiness. The kind of happiness that we want. The kind that lasts.

How often have we searched for happiness and failed to have it? How often have we thought we’ve found it only to lose it later on?

Here’s one step to help you find happiness. The first thing you need to do is to distinguish between two kinds of happiness.

Two Kinds of Happiness

There is a kind of happiness that can easily make you smile or laugh. Sometimes it can even be so overwhelming that it makes you cry. After a while, however, you realize that your feelings slowly start to fade. Somehow, you find it harder and harder to remember the way you felt before. Eventually, you may wonder whether you’ve been really happy at all.

On the other hand, there is a happiness that doesn’t seem like happiness at the start. It’s so subtle that it almost speaks in whispers. It moves ever gently you may fail to notice it’s there. But if you pay attention to it and you give it time, and if you allow it to touch you and to enter your heart, you’d see how it would grow steadily from day to day. You’d understand it more and more.

Unlike the first kind of happiness, this one doesn’t quickly fade. This one doesn’t excite you only to let you down. But this kind of happiness grows deep until it takes root. It changes you and moves you. It penetrates your very soul.

This kind of happiness is not a sudden rain that dissipates the heat for a while only to leave you dry again. This happiness is a fountain that never ends, a source of water you can come back to again and again, filling your every need and satisfying the deepest desires of your heart.

Now if there are two kinds of happiness, which one would you rather have?

What St. Ignatius Thought

Did you know that St. Ignatius was fond of reading romance novels? When he was once badly injured and had to stay at rest for a time, he asked for some fiction to read. There was however none of the said books in the house where he stayed and he was instead given “The Life of Christ” and “Flowers of the Saints”. Reading the said books helped him meditate on holy things, though he sometimes still daydreamed of his previous worldly thoughts.

Here’s an excerpt from his autobiography (The Autobiography of St. Ignatius) that tells us the difference he felt between those two thoughts:

“When he thought of worldly things it gave him great pleasure, but afterward he found himself dry and sad. But when he thought of journeying to Jerusalem, and of living only on herbs, and practising austerities, he found pleasure not only while thinking of them, but also when he had ceased.

“This difference he did not notice or value, until one day the eyes of his soul were opened and he began to inquire the reason of the difference. He learned by experience that one train of thought left him sad, the other joyful. This was his first reasoning on spiritual matters. Afterward, when he began the Spiritual Exercises, he was enlightened, and understood what he afterward taught his children about the discernment of spirits.”

The Happiness We Seek

God is the true happiness we seek. We may not always be aware of it, but we thirst for it. We try to replace it with other things, but such things cannot satisfy us for long.

Here’s a quote by St. Augustine that I could never forget, “You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”

“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 he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for…” - Catechism of the Catholic Church

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would have not been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace.” - St. Augustine

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