For much of the last twenty years, I think I was trying to be happy.
That sounds innocent enough. After all, who doesn’t want to be happy?
But looking back, I’m not sure I ever stopped to ask myself what happiness actually was. I simply assumed it was something I could eventually obtain. If I worked hard enough. If I accomplished something. If the right people noticed me. If my art received attention. If I could afford something I wanted. If life became interesting enough.
There was always another if.
And for a while, those things worked.
Buying something new felt good. Recognition felt good. Compliments felt good. Being wanted or needed felt good. Creating something and having people admire it certainly felt good.
But the feeling never stayed.
Eventually the new thing wasn’t new anymore. The compliment was forgotten. The attention moved somewhere else. And boredom or loneliness quietly returned.
So I would look for the next thing.
I don’t say this as someone who believes enjoying life is wrong. I still appreciate beautiful things. I still love art. I still enjoy creating. I don’t believe God asks us to walk around deliberately miserable just to prove that we are faithful.
What changed was that I began to recognize the difference between enjoying something and needing it to satisfy me.
There is a tremendous difference.
Happiness and Joy Are Not the Same Thing
The older I became, the less interested I became in being entertained by life.
Maybe age has something to do with that. Things that once seemed terribly important gradually lost some of their shine. I began to notice how exhausting it was to continually need something outside myself to make the inside of me feel complete.
And when I began taking my Catholic faith seriously (not simply calling myself Catholic, but actually trying to live as one) I started seeing my old pursuits differently.
Catholicism introduced me to something I had largely overlooked:
Joy.
Happiness and joy can certainly coexist, but I no longer think they are the same thing.
Happiness often depends upon circumstances.
Joy can survive them.
Happiness says, Things are going well.
Joy can say, Things are difficult, but God is still here.
That distinction has become increasingly important to me.
St. Paul wrote from prison:
“Rejoice in the Lord always. I shall say it again: rejoice!”
— Philippians 4:4
That verse makes much more sense to me now than it once did.
Paul wasn’t telling people to pretend everything was wonderful. He certainly wasn’t living a comfortable life himself. His joy had simply become anchored somewhere his circumstances couldn’t easily reach.
That somewhere was Christ.
God Was Patient With Me
One of the things I appreciate most when looking back at my life is God’s patience.
He didn’t remove everything I enjoyed. He didn’t suddenly make material things repulsive to me. He didn’t force some dramatic revelation upon me.
He simply allowed me enough time to discover that many of the things I thought would fulfill me couldn’t.
I had to experience their limitations myself.
There is something in Christ’s parable of the treasure hidden in the field that speaks to me differently now:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure buried in a field, which a person finds and hides again, and out of joy goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”
— Matthew 13:44
For years I might have focused on what the man gave up.
Now I notice why he gave it up.
Joy.
He discovered something of greater value.
That is increasingly how I understand my return to Catholicism. God wasn’t simply handing me a longer list of things I wasn’t supposed to do. He was slowly changing what I considered valuable in the first place.
That has included some uncomfortable examinations of my own moral views.
Things I once justified, ignored, or simply accepted because the world around me accepted them began looking different when I started asking a more difficult question:
Does this bring me closer to God, or does it quietly move me away from Him?
That question has changed quite a bit for me.
The Problem Wasn’t Having Things
I don’t think material possessions themselves were ever my real problem.
The problem was what I sometimes asked them to do for me.
I asked possessions to cure boredom.
I asked accomplishments to establish my worth.
I asked attention to cure loneliness.
I asked validation to reassure me that I mattered.
Those are enormous responsibilities to place upon things that were never designed to carry them.
Jesus spoke about this very plainly:
“For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.”
— Matthew 6:21
I used to read verses like that primarily as warnings against greed.
Now I see something more personal in them.
Christ is asking me to examine where my heart actually rests.
What am I afraid of losing?
What do I believe I need before I can be content?
Whose approval am I still seeking?
What occupies my thoughts when everything becomes quiet?
Those questions reveal treasure far more accurately than a bank statement ever could.
I Still Have a Long Way to Go
I would love to say that once I recognized all of this, I became completely detached from validation, pride, possessions and worldly distractions.
I didn’t.
This is a retrospective, not a victory speech.
I still catch myself wanting approval. I still enjoy things. I still become distracted. I still wrestle with pride and with wanting life to unfold according to my expectations.
But something fundamental has changed.
I don’t expect those things to save me from myself anymore.
My Catholic faith has gradually taught me that sanctification isn’t about constructing the perfect life. It is about allowing God to transform the person living it.
And strangely, the more seriously I pursue that, the less I seem to need life to constantly entertain me.
A quiet day can be enough.
Prayer can be enough.
Mass can be enough.
Creating something simply because God gave me the ability to create can be enough, even if nobody applauds it.
There is freedom in that.
Maybe I Was Pursuing the Wrong Thing
Our culture speaks constantly about happiness.
Do what makes you happy.
Find what makes you happy.
You deserve to be happy.
I understand the sentiment. I spent a large portion of my life believing it.
But happiness is a difficult thing to hold onto because life was never designed to remain pleasant all the time.
People disappoint us. Bodies age. Money comes and goes. Relationships change. Plans fail. People we love eventually leave this world. No amount of success can protect us from every form of suffering.
If my peace depends entirely upon circumstances cooperating with me, then my peace will always be fragile.
Joy offers something different.
Not constant smiling.
Not pretending suffering doesn’t hurt.
Not some permanent emotional high.
Something quieter.
The growing conviction that my life has meaning because it belongs to God.
At this stage of my life, that is becoming far more attractive to me than simply being entertained.
I spent many years asking life to make me happy.
These days, I’m trying to ask a different question:
What will bring me closer to God?
I suspect I will spend the rest of my life learning the answer.
