Again I saw that under the sun the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the skillful; but time and chance happen to them all.
—Ecclesiastes 9:11
Perfection depends only on accepting poverty, misery, hardship, disappointment, and whatever comes in course, and accepting it willingly, gladly, freely, eagerly until death, as if one were prepared for it and therefore unmoved by it and not asking why.
— Meister Eckhart
Happiness is being open to the hap of life, the sheer chance of it. It is the relinquishment of the endeavor to control what befalls us. That relinquishment sets us free to receive the gift of what happens to us at any given moment, whatever that gift may chance to be.
Such openness does not presume to judge what happens to us in terms of value or profit. Nor does it presume that we should only be given what we first ask for, rather than something unexpected.
Indeed, the best and greatest gifts are those we are given completely unexpectedly. A compliment we have fished for is never so pleasing, for example, as one given us spontaneously.
What do we know of what is good for us or bad for us? What do we know of what is good or bad for others? The presumption that we do know such things is presumptuous.
Such presumptuousness makes our happiness dependent upon getting what we think we want rather than what we think we don’t want. It makes us covet the first and fear the second. We feel robbed of happiness if we are not granted what we so greedily seek and protected from what we so fearfully try to avoid. All such desire and aversion are rooted in the soil of the same presumption.
If we are among those who are comfortable using the words God and pray and we pray God to grant us the good and protect us from evil, it is only if we pray free of all presumptuousness that we do not pray to idols. Otherwise, praying such a prayer is practicing idolatry. It is void of all genuine faith, all true trust in God. Instead of fearing God and avoiding sin, pondering on our beds and being still, making justice our sacrifice and trusting in God, as we are advised to do in Psalm 4 in the same Hebrew scriptures from which the epigraph at the beginning of this post derives, we do what that Psalm warns us against doing: we become rebels whose hearts are closed, who love what is futile and seek what is false.
Only in being open to the hap of life, the sheer chance of it, do we remain open to what many of us are comfortable calling God. Many of us are not comfortable calling it that, to be sure. That makes no real difference, however. Whatever term speaks to us in our own usage, or even if we have no such term at all, it remains true for us all that only in trusting can we be happy, and only in being happy can we keep faith.
* * *
Nothing is permanent. Everything is subject to change. Being is always becoming.
— The Buddha
Do not brood over the terrible experiences you have had, for it is these very experiences that have brought you to me. Everything is in my hands, and I created such circumstances for you, that you would come to me. You had to come!
— Meher Baba
By happy happenstance, the words happy, hap, and happen all derive from the same Proto-Indo-European root: *kob-, which means “to suit, fit, succeed.”
What suits us is to be happy, whatever may chance to come our way. Only that is fitting to a human being. It alone counts as genuine success.
Whoever is not happy is a failure, no matter how much money, celebrity, prestige, credentials, or degrees he may possess. He may prance about as though he were filled with happiness, but all he is filled with is misery, a misery he always tries, consciously or unconsciously, to shower on others.
Only she who is happy is truly a success, which fits her perfectly. She wears her success gracefully. She has no need to cling to it or boast about it, and disdains all such frivolous deeds, which only — and always — lead round and round again back to the same underlying unhappiness that they express. Her happiness is her umbrella against all showers of misery.
She who is happy has no need to lay claim to luck. It comes to her naturally, without being asked for.
He who is unhappy never has any luck, because he is not open to receive what luck brings.
* * *
Be grateful for whatever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
— Rumi
Happiness can exist only in acceptance.
— George Orwell
It makes no difference whether one is Jewish (as was the Teacher of Ecclesiastes), Christian (as was Meister Eckhart), Buddhist (including even the Buddha himself), Hindu (as was Meher Baba), Islamic (as was Rumi), or none of the above (as was George Orwell). Whether one self-identifies as belonging to one or another of the wide variety of religious and spiritual traditions or to none of them whatsoever makes no difference. Whatever identity one assigns oneself or is assigned by others does not matter in the least when it comes to being happy.
All that matters when it comes to being happy is being open to the chance of life.
Danse macabre in 16th century Bienno, Italy — Luca Giarelli
Addendum: The link below is to an old video consisting of a short (less that 18 minutes) lecture by Kurt Vonnegut on how to write a story. It is amusing, as Vonnegut always is, but delivers a serious message, as Vonnegut always does — a message about the hap of life, the sheer chance of it. (I thank my friend Marc Wilson for calling my attention to the video.)