Over the weekend, I was talking with a friend of mine who has an upper management job in a large international organization. He was telling me about a documentary he watched on happiness that featured the story of a Vietnamese rickshaw cab operator. In the interviews, the man talked about his life and was surprisingly positive given the level of poverty he experienced. He spoke of how much he enjoyed his job because he got to work outside and be active. At the end of the day, he had enough money to eat a good meal with his son, who he was close with. They shared a one bedroom home with only three walls, which he liked because it kept most of the rain out. Ultimately, he was quite happy with his day to day life despite conditions that most westerners wouldn’t be content with in any sense of the word.
My friend, who lives an upper middle class life, went on to compare the story with his experiences with some of wealthier people he knew through work contacts. Many of them considered themselves to be middle class, despite owning multiple homes, purchasing new cars annually, vacationing in expensive locations around the world, etc. They justified their self assessments by comparing themselves to even wealthier people, many of whom would self assess the same way and justify it by comparing themselves to even wealthier people they knew.
His point was interesting and worth taking time to consider: happiness is rarely connected to material possessions or the typical measures of success that are promoted by popular culture or the world around us.
Nearly 3 millennia ago King Solomon wrote a book called Ecclesiastes, which is a look back on his life and an assessment of what made him happy and fulfilled. Solomon was the third king of the united kingdom of Israel, and was gifted by God with tremendous wisdom. He became wildly wealthy by inventing what was essentially the first toll roads. Israel is in a spot where you need to pass through it to transport goods if you want to move them over land, which was far safer, faster, and easier than traveling by sea. As a result, he became incredibly wealthy and every nation in the world sent emissaries to make treaties with him, many marrying their princesses to him to create political bonds. At the height of his empire, Solomon had over 1,000 wives and wealth to make modern billionaires blush with a total net worth in modern day dollars of $2.1 trillion (that’s $2,100,000,000,000!).
In Ecclesiastes, Solomon talks about all of the things he did in his life with his wealth and power. He designed and built cities and wonders. He partied like no other man in history, denying himself no pleasure of the flesh. He ate whatever he wanted and enjoyed everything the finest of everything world had to offer. He read, studied, wrote, and grew in knowledge to the point of brilliance. In the end, he found that all of those pursuits in life were empty. None of them brought him happiness or made him content. The more he got, the more he wanted until he was full and still unhappy. He describes it all as chasing after the wind. Even if you get ahold of it, your hands are still empty.
Solomon’s ultimate conclusion was simple. He repeats it over and over throughout his book. The best thing for any man to do in his life is to work hard at the labor God has given him to do, enjoy the fruits of his labor, love his wife and family, and thank/enjoy the God that gave it all to him. It sounds strange and far too simple, but this is the true key to happiness in life. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal says that all people were designed to have God be at the center of their lives. If He isn’t there, we live with a hole in ourselves. Solomon learned that you can never fill it with stuff or experiences. Your family, work, possessions, and everything else are just gifts God has given to you. Knowing God, living for Him, and enjoying the gifts He has given you is the key to happiness. Making anything else the key will just leave you chasing the wind.
