Can We Be Commanded to Be Happy?

By Rabbi Jason Miller | October 8, 2014

Rabbis Without Borders

Rabbis Without Borders is a dynamic forum for exploring contemporary issues in the Jewish world and beyond. Written by rabbis of different denominations, viewpoints, and parts of the country, Rabbis Without Borders is a project of Clal – The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership.

Tonight begins the 8-day festival of Sukkot (7 days in Israel and in the American Reform movement). One of the core texts from the Torah we learn about the festival of sukkot is v’samachta b’chageicha, v’hayita ach sameach—we should rejoice in our holiday and we should feel nothing but happiness. We even sing a catchy chant using these words. But, is it really possible to command happiness?

We live in challenging times. Wars, diseases, and injustice around the globe, it’s no wonder that this year’s most famous song was so uplifting. Pharrell Williams helped to get us all out of our funk when he sang:

It might seem crazy what I’m about to say
Sunshine she’s here, you can take a break
I’m a hot air balloon that could go to space
With the air, like I don’t care baby by the way

Because I’m happy – Clap along if you feel like a room without a roof
Because I’m happy – Clap along if you feel like happiness is the truth
Because I’m happy – Clap along if you know what happiness is to you
Because I’m happy – Clap along if you feel like that’s what you wanna do

I think Pharrell Williams sang the song that we really needed to hear this year. Happiness isn’t easy to come by, but it’s something we’re all searching for
—
not just on the weeklong holiday of Sukkot, but all year round. But what really is happiness? Because if we don’t know what happiness really is, then maybe we’re wasting a whole lot of precious time in our lives by seeking it out!

Sukkot Happiness In his book
Stumbling on Happiness
, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert uses cutting-edge research to show that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. We often think we know what will make us happy, but we really do not. We also say we are happy but oftentimes, as Gilbert explains, we are just misusing the term “happy.” Reading Gilbert’s book forced me to think of new ways to think of happiness and to bring more happiness into my own life.

I love how Gilbert begins his book Stumbling on Happiness: “Despite the third word of the title, this is not an instruction manual that will tell you anything useful about how to be happy. Those books are located in the self-help section two aisles over, and once you’ve bought one, done everything it says to do, and found yourself miserable anyway, you can always come back here to understand why.”

Rather than thinking about this pursuit of happiness as a search for a life in which we’re always happy in the sense we typically think of happiness—always smiling, laughing, you know, Disney’s concept of Mr. Bluebird on my shoulder—I’d like you to consider three words that better define what we’re seeking. Not happiness, but contentment, gratitude and meaning. Let’s explore these three concepts:

Contentment requires that we look around at our family and our home and our lot in life and we say “Baruch Hashem”—blessed is God for my life. I’m not a fan of saying Baruch Hashem in a reflexive way every time someone asks how things are going, but I do believe we need to spend more time feeling grateful for what we have. That is contentment.

Now, let’s look at another better way to think of the goal of happiness and that is gratitude. Studies have shown that people who practice gratitude in their daily life are happier than those who do not. There seems to be a clear connection between learning to be grateful and living a more fulfilling life. Social science research has demonstrated that cultivating gratitude, learning to recognize and respond with thankfulness to the goodness of other people and the beauty in life, as opposed to complaint or indifference, stimulates a host of benefits.

Gratitude means being attuned to the gifts that have come our way. Sukkot, is almost completely about expressing gratitude. The Avinu Malkeinu prayer we sang on Rosh Hashanah (we omitted it this Yom Kippur since it fell on Shabbat) is all about the gratitude we give to God. In fact, the vast majority of our prayers consists of offering gratitude to God for our lives.

And this brings us to meaning: In an article in The Atlantic in January 2013, the author takes a look at happiness through the perspective of Viktor Frankl, a prominent Jewish psychiatrist and neurologist in Vienna, who was arrested in September 1942 and transported to a Nazi concentration camp with his wife and parents. When Frankl’s camp was liberated, most of his family, including his pregnant wife, had died, but he survived. In his bestselling 1946 book, Man’s Search for Meaning, which he wrote in nine days about his experiences in the camps, Frankl concluded that the difference between those who had lived and those who had died came down to one thing: Meaning, an insight he came to early in life. As Frankl saw in the camps, those who found meaning even in the most horrendous circumstances were far more resilient to suffering than those who did not. “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing,” Frankl wrote, “the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

I wish you a Chag Sameach—may Sukkot help you find contentment, meaning and gratitude in addition to joy.

Like this post? Join the conversation through MyJewishLearning’s weekly blogs newsletter.