Don’t Wait to be Happy
Connection, nature, touch, sunlight
I got super pissed off listening to a happiness podcast recently. There were three premises that set me off:
1) Happiness is a destination in the future
2) Being sick or disabled is contrary to achieving happiness
3) Aging itself is a threat to happiness
This podcast is one of a raft of the megabazillion-dollar happiness – wellness – lifestyle industrial complex that generally speaking promote perfectable health, and conflate youthfulness, happiness, health and wellbeing into one very skinny package that can be yours for a low low price …
Here is an alternative view.
1) Happiness is only ever experienced in the now. It isn’t an experience to chase or aspire to, but a natural outcome of living with purpose, connection and meaning.
2) Happiness is fleeting – it is a temporary experience as are all emotions, not a permanent state of affairs. It is one of many normal human experiences available to us throughout our lives.
3) The temporary absence of happiness is also normal.
4) Sick and disabled people can experience happiness. Obviously. And meaning. And purpose. (And a person can experience both illness and wellness at the same time).
5) Aging can be a process of becoming more and more able to drop into the present moment with appreciation.
This idea that illness and happiness can’t co-exist reminds me also of the problem with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.
We’ve all seen Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—the tidy pyramid that suggests we must climb from the bottom (basic survival) to the top (self-actualization) in neat, linear steps. First things first – and happiness purpose meaning and fulfilment are sort of like these luxury goods that are only available for the few people who have ticked all the other boxes first.
What would this have to mean, if that were true? That we can’t be happy – or fulfilled, or find meaning – unless we meet a whole laundry list of needs first. Does this mean that happiness purpose and meaning are only available to wealthy and privileged people? I don’t know about you, but this does not match my experience or what I observe in others around me.
Maslow’s framework traps us in either/or thinking:
Either you’re safe and secure, or you can pursue meaning.
Either your physiological needs are met, or you can be creative.
Either you’ve ticked off all the boxes, or you’re not “ready” to be happy.
But life isn’t a checklist. It’s messy, layered, and beautifully paradoxical.
Viktor Frankl Knew Better
In Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankl—psychiatrist, Holocaust survivor, and founder of logotherapy—challenged this linear model. He observed that even in the most extreme deprivation, humans could find meaning. Not after their needs were met. Not once they were safe. But within suffering itself.
Frankl wrote:
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
This is the radical, liberating truth that the happiness industry doesn’t want us to sit with: we don’t have to wait to be happy. We don’t need to tick off every box on a pyramid. We don’t need perfect health, youthfulness, or a curated lifestyle to access joy, meaning, or purpose.
We can choose to make meaning within our circumstances—not after we’ve fixed them. We can experience happiness in spite of pain, uncertainty, or limitation. And we can honour the full spectrum of human emotion without pathologizing the absence of happiness.
So let’s stop chasing happiness like it’s a prize at the end of a self-improvement scavenger hunt. Let’s stop buying into the idea that we’re not “ready” to be happy until we’ve earned it.
Instead, let’s reclaim happiness as a moment-to-moment possibility.
Let’s embrace meaning as something we create, not something we wait for.
Let’s live now—not later.
