Newsletter #3
Worship, work and happiness
Hi there,
Welcome to the third edition of The Happiness Habit. I’m very grateful that you’ve taken the time to sign up to receive these fortnightly offerings. I hope you get as much from reading them as I do writing them.
In the last newsletter, I talked about spirituality and the idea that a ‘vital spiritual experience’ could potentially help anybody, not just the helpless addict, get over the spiritual malady that many of us face. But how do we get that ‘vital spiritual experience? What’s the process?
The first step is coming to terms with what we worship.
“Me? Worship?” I hear you cry “I don’t worship anything.”
Well, let’s just look into that shall we? Because I suspect you do worship something. You just don’t realise it yet.
David Foster Wallace once wrote something that has really stuck with me: "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship."
Sit with that for a moment. Let it sink in. And then look at what it is that you worship. What are you completely and utterly devoted to?
Worshipping at the alter of work
Many of us worship work. We’re devoted to work. The average UK adult spends 42 hours a week working. That's without counting commutes, overtime, or those late-night emails we respond to at home and pretend don't count. That’s a lot of time. And that’s just the amount of time we’re ‘doing’ work. On top of that we’ve got the amount of time we’re ‘thinking’ work.
Now I’m not saying that work isn’t important. It is. We need to earn money to pay the bills and enjoy a decent quality of life. The problem is we allocate too much importance to it. We devote our lives to it. We put it ahead of most other aspects of life. Including (if we’re being brutally honest) our health, our families and our happiness. I think it’s hard to deny that most of us worship work.
And why do we worship work?
Because we worship the fruits of work.
We worship earning money. We worship the promise of security. We worship status, recognition, success. Yet how often do we actually feel the benefits of this worship? How often do we feel really great about the work we do and experience deep joy from it?
Not very often, I would argue. We get the occasional lift when our boss praises us. We feel happy for a while when the client tells us they’re delighted. We feel the momentary buzz of hitting this year’s sales target. And the boost we get from a pay rise is fantastic - for a month - and then it rapidly disappears.
That leaves an awful lot of time feeling pretty much nothing at all. And the stats back up this observation. Only 11% of UK employees feel truly good about their job and engaged at work. Think about that. The vast majority of us, 89% of us, spend our precious life force, our limited time on this earth, worshipping at an altar that leaves us feeling pretty much empty most of the time.
Wallace understood this. He finished the quote I mentioned above with this warning: "An outstanding reason for choosing some form spirituality to worship is that pretty much anything else will eat you alive."
Strong words. But he does have a point. The evidence suggests that our devotion to work is eating us alive, just as Wallace predicted. We’re so enamoured with the enticing fruits of work that we’ve become blind to the harmful consequences. Our commitment to earning a living is costing us dearly. We’re devoted but drained. Worshipping but worn out. And that’s a painful realisation to come to terms with.
So how did we get it so wrong? How come we’ve spent decades being so devoted to work only to discover it’s harming us more than we’d like to admit?
The Type of Happiness We Crave
I believe the answer lies in our misguided understanding of what makes us truly happy. Not specifically ‘us’ as individuals. But ‘us’ as citizens born and raised in a consumer driven economy with a strong protestant work ethic.
This combination has resulted in ‘us’ being trained and educated to believe that ‘the good life’ comes a result of working hard, gaining a good reputation, and earning good money. If we crack this formula, happiness awaits.
It’s a compelling proposition. And I, for one, wholeheartedly believed in it. But there’s a catch. This formula for happiness is predicated on the assumption that happiness is found ‘out there’ somewhere. It is found in the extra money we earn to buy more things. Better things. Bigger things. It’s found in the recognition we get. In the praise we receive from our bosses and clients. In the status that comes with a job title. And the power we feel as a boss.
And it’s true. There is some semblance of happiness to be found in these things. But the happiness we get from these external sources is transitory. That’s because this type of happiness is conditional happiness.
Conditional happiness is related to and conditional upon external factors. We rely on people, places, situations, or things to make us happy.
The hallmarks of conditional happiness are:
External: It relies on something other than ourselves to generate happiness and is therefore out of our control. People, places, situations, or things can make us happy or unhappy.
Short-lived: It soon fades. It doesn't take long for the impact of a pay raise, new clothes, a new lover, food, drink, drugs, and compliments to wear off.
Craving: Conditional happiness never fully satisfies; you are left wanting more. Seeking this type of happiness can never satisfy the yearning for more that it generates. In this way, seeking conditional happiness can be addictive.
And it’s this insatiable craving for this particular type of happiness that eats us alive. We worship work because we worship the conditional happiness that the fruits of work promise us. But we’ll never realise that promise. It’s a false promise. We’ll never be fully happy. It’s impossible. There will always be dissatisfaction. We’ll be drawn further and further down the rabbit hole of seeking more, yearning more, but feeling less and less.
I’m guessing that you recognise that feeling.
“But happiness is happiness, right? There isn’t another type of happiness!”
The Type of Happiness We Deserve
Not quite true. You see there is an alternative type of happiness. That alternative is called spiritual happiness. This type of happiness comes from within and is characterised by feelings like joy, peace, freedom, wholeness and fulfilment.
The hallmarks of spiritual happiness are:
Internal: Spiritual happiness is unconditional; it doesn't rely on external factors. We can be happy whether external factors are the way we would like them or not.
Enduring: There's a permanence to this sort of happiness. It may not have the peaks of pleasure, thrills, and excitement, but it does have a much more enduring quality.
Satisfaction: Spiritual happiness is content with what is and doesn't yearn for more. It's the sort of happiness that generates gratitude for what we have rather than dissatisfaction with what we don't.
Unfortunately we can’t buy spiritual happiness. It doesn’t come conveniently packed with a money back guarantee and next day delivery from Amazon. We need to work for it. We need to apply ourselves. We need to devote time understanding the principles that give rise to spiritual happiness. And we need to commit to practising those principles on a daily basis.
In short, just like Wallace said, we need to worship some form of spirituality to avoid being eaten alive.
Let the Spiritual Adventure Begin
Now this doesn’t mean we have to give up work, renounce all our wealth and head off to the nearest monastery. Not yet anyway. It may not even mean working less hours. But it does mean re-arranging the priorities in our life. It means putting the things that give rise to spiritual happiness ahead of the things that give rise to conditional happiness.
The big question is whether you are willing to give that a go? Are you willing start working towards spiritual happiness? And give up your worship of work - just a little bit?
That may sound like a relatively straight forward decision to make. But journey that follows isn’t always that easy or clear cut. The spiritual path is often quite challenging and confusing. It’s more like an adventure than a stroll in the park.
But that, my friends, is exactly why I’m here.
I’m here to help people, people like you, find some form of spirituality to engage with. Any form. Whatever form of spirituality floats your boat. Anything that can wean you off the thing that you’re currently worshipping that is eating you alive. I’m here to introduce you to the spiritual adventure and act as guide.
I know what it feels like to worship at the alter of work and alcohol. And so I know what it feels like to be eaten alive. It’s desperate. I also know what it feels like to worship some form of spirituality. It’s beautiful.
I’m here to spread that message of beauty as best I can. That’s why I’m writing this newsletter. And maybe you’re here to hear that message and begin your own spiritual adventure. And that’s why you’ve read this far.
Until next time.
Simon