When I was in the Lower Sixth, I went to Turkey on a school trip. Every shop along the harbour front offered free samples of Turkish Delight and so I visited every shop I could find and tried out more and more free samples. For a while it was great – I love Turkish Delight! – but before long I started to feel very sick indeed.
Now what’s this got to do with learning how to be happy? The answer lies in a book written in the 4th century BC: Aristotle’s The Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle wrote about eudaimonia, which is sometimes translated as “happiness,” but which is more accurately translated as “human flourishing.” Aristotle wanted to find out what makes us truly happy, what gives us lasting happiness.
To find an answer to that question, he took a step back and asked what the ergon (the function, task or work) of a human being is. Just like flautists, sculptors, or craftsmen (to use his examples) who have a clear job to do and are fulfilled when they do that job well, all humans have a job to do too. So, what is our main job in life? It is to actively exercise our soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue, to use Aristotle’s own precise language. To put it simply, being happy is something we do.
Happiness comes from living well, Aristotle argued, but too often we think that happiness comes from external circumstances: how much money we have; how great our friends are; where we go on holiday. Not so, Aristotle said. He claimed that what people often have as their goals in life—wealth or health, for example—are not what give us ultimate happiness. They are simply steps on the way. What gives us ultimate happiness is embedding the virtues in our lives and that takes a long time. In fact, “to be happy takes a complete lifetime,” he wrote.
But what did he mean by the virtues, that word I have now dropped in twice? He meant things like courage, truthfulness, modesty, and generosity. He also wrote about some virtues that may be less familiar to us. Virtues like temperance, for example.
Sometimes the easiest way to understand what Aristotle meant is to look at the examples he gives of related vices. Courage, for example, is a great virtue. The related vices both relate to fear. If we have too much fear we become cowardly and if we have too little fear we become rash. But if we face the world as it really is, we know that we have to be courageous because the world is neither completely safe nor a place that is filled with dangers at every turn.
But let’s get back to the virtue of temperance. The related vices are self-indulgence (simply gorging ourselves on any pleasant experience, whether it be food, drink, or anything else that makes us feel good) and its opposite, a lack of feeling (when we become numbed to pleasures entirely). Temperance is knowing how to enjoy life by not going to either extreme. Unfortunately, I didn’t know this when I was seventeen. Aristotle knew what I didn’t: that eating a little Turkish Delight is much more pleasurable than stuffing yourself with as many pieces as you can lay your hands on. There comes a time when we need to stop eating Turkish Delight. That’s what Aristotle meant by actively exercising our soul’s faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue. Happiness comes, in one sense, from doing the right thing.
So how does all this relate to us? I’d like to suggest three practical applications of Aristotle’s ideas to our own situations:
1. We tend to assume that if our circumstances were different - if we didn’t have so many tests and exams to worry about (or emails to answer and bills to pay) - then we’d be happy. But Aristotle suggests that happiness is within our control. It’s how we respond to circumstances that matters.
2. We can easily mistake means for ends. For example, we think we want money when we really want security. By focusing on our ultimate ends, we are more likely to be happy.
3. However, Aristotle also shows us that sometimes doing stuff can get in the way of happiness. Sometimes we need to stop doing and start contemplating. Giving our minds over to a particular interest or issue can make us happy. Really paying attention to something or someone can make us happy.
And perhaps I can add a fourth point: eating some (but not too much) Turkish Delight can make us happy as well.
(Adapted from Popes, Emperors and Elephants: the first thousand years of Christian culture)