A few weeks ago, I got a couple of young women knocking on my door. They were modestly dressed and were clearly not interested in my money, but my religious beliefs. They were from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints aka the Mormon Church.
I usually don't get many door-to-door missionaries and I was actually in the middle of a movie and dinner when they arrived. My wife was out working that night, so it was just me.
They started by asking me about happiness. It was your typical cult-like questioning where you can easily get sucked in if you have a weak will. Not that these girls were being malicious, I genuinely believed that they believed they were trying to help me. I let their naivety go, since I wasn't going to start an impromptu Bible study, but I addressed their questions in a rather odd way.
Basically I responded that I don't really have anything that makes me happy. That is to say that as far as I can tell, there is nothing here on Earth that I've found that makes me happy. I have moments of happiness, that is for certain, but I have rarely been able to recreate them on the fly. To me, happiness is like every other emotion and chasing after it is like chasing the wind.
I'm pretty sure my response was a little odd for these two ladies. They clearly were expecting me to say that I draw happiness from some material object or from some form of entertainment. They didn't expect that I was someone who just wasn't all that concerned with finding happiness.
Maybe that's something that sets me apart from so many other people. Part of the reason for my attitude toward happiness comes from my faith in God and His Son Jesus. Having read through the entire Bible twice now, working on my third time together with my wife, I see clearly that there is no happiness to be found in my religious following. Real Christianity certainly is more difficult to follow and come to terms with than most Western Christians realize. You will suffer still even after you accept Jesus as the Savior, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. In fact, you may suffer more than the normal course of human suffering.
Beyond my own religious beliefs, I find myself content with my own life. Sure, things could be better, but what I have is a blessing and I am grateful that God has not pointed me out to Satan as an example of a great follower. Right now, things are what they are and I've come to accept them. They don't bring me happiness all the time, but if I were happy all the time, I'd be insane.
My advice to anyone who is looking for happiness is that they would have better luck chasing down rabbits in a dense forest. Happiness comes and goes like every other state of being and you can't expect to find it in the same things all the time. The old joke is that if you eat lobster long enough it eventually tastes like soap. The best any man (or woman) can do is to rejoice in the toil that is his lot in life.