Happiness is a Half-Truth

When the cameras stopped rolling, Oprah Winfrey would regularly ask her audience, "What do you really want in life?" The most resounding and common answer was, "I want to be happy." 

Not surprising. We’ve all heard it, or even said it out loud ourselves. But like any good interviewer, Oprah dug deeper. She would follow up with a simple, 

“What does happiness look like for you?” 

Murmuring and squirming in their seats, people would fumble through their vague answers. Something about their kids, health or income. Never fully able to articulate or confidently define this so-called “happiness.” 

It’s not that people were lying. But they weren’t telling the whole truth, either. 

Happiness is a half-truth. 

A statement that conveys only part of the truth, especially one used deliberately in order to deceive someone.

It’s a story most of us have bought into from the beginning. After all, “the pursuit of happiness” is written directly into our American DNA. And according to Oprah’s audience, we’re willing to aim our entire life towards it without ever defining what “happiness” truly is. 

The problem isn’t being happy, it’s what we’re missing out on while chasing it. 

I'm a sucker for fairy tales, and always have been. Show me the movie with the girl struggling to figure out who she is, only to discover herself (and her attractive husband), and I’ll likely watch it 9 times. Give me the woman who has to prove herself to get the dream job, I’ll watch it 10 times. 

But the concept of happily ever after, in movies or real life, is that it never paints the whole picture. Our messy humanness sits just out of frame.

When happiness becomes our end goal, we run the risk of missing all the beautiful growth that comes from the challenges in the middle. The moment we hit a snag we feel like we’re doing it all wrong. Like we’ve made a big mistake or failed miserably because we’ve been told we’re supposed to “be happy.” Our aversion to being unhappy compels us to hurry past the parts of life that make us uncomfortable. Not realizing the trade-off we’re making.

We unearth deep meaning when we do the hard work — finding out more about who we are, what we care about, and most importantly, what we really want in life. 

Over the years I’ve tried to rewrite the story in my own head. Leaving the elusive chase for the meaningful middle. It’s not without fail. But I’ve come to see happiness for what it truly is.

Happiness comes and goes, so I’m trading it for feeling fully alive.