There's More to Life Than Being Happy (2013)

&gt; Having children, for example, is associated with the meaningful life and requires self-sacrifice, but it has been famously associated with low happiness among parents, including the ones in this study.<p>I have to either strongly disagree with the outcome of this research or disagree with the definition of happiness used here. If you were to ask parents (myself included), if having children makes you happier in life, I think you would get a resounding yes it does! Having kids is stressful at times, and you can be constantly tired and stretched to your limits but the heights of joy one experiences as a parent has no bounds. I&#x27;d hate to think that the majority of parents think of child rearing as some sort of meaningful suffering...

I&#x27;m curious to know how others deal with meaning in the context of their jobs.<p>I certainly live for things outside of work, but at the same time work is a necessity to survive. How do you balance how much time you devote to work when your source of meaning is unrelated?

sounds a lot like we sour on the &quot;pure&quot; happiness of merely providing for our own selfish needs, then have children, a deliberate hardship, to satisfy our &quot;un-selfish&quot; need for meaning. this is pointed out by the article&#x27;s scientific sourcing. but - devil&#x27;s advocate here - isn&#x27;t having children also fundamentally selfish? (says person in a quite possibly crowded room of parents)

&gt;by ... &quot;giving&quot; rather than &quot;taking&quot; -- we are not only expressing our fundamental humanity, but are also acknowledging that that there is more to the good life than the pursuit of simple happiness.<p>Yeah but you can do both. And pursue happiness for others which often as a side effect makes you happier in yourself.<p>The article mentions Frankel and the holocaust. If Hitler had had a philosophy of making people happy rather than &quot;German expansionism, belief in the superiority of an &#x27;Aryan race&#x27; and an extreme form of German nationalism&quot;, as Wikipedia puts it, things could have been more chilled. You can overdo the deep philosophy and end up avenging some historical slight or slaughtering unbelievers when just being nice would work fine.<p>Disclosure - member of Action for Happiness which promotes that sort of stuff.

This seems like an unsophisticated view of what &#x27;happiness&#x27; is. In my view, you have a more-or-less conscious reason for doing everything you do, with happiness being at the top of the chain, the state you build and maintain for no other reason. Viewed from within that frame, it seems like the response to this essay would be, if not to be more happy, why pursue a life with great purpose and meaning?<p>Edit--it feels more pompous not to cite my sources than to do so, so I&#x27;m getting this mainly from Aristotle&#x27;s Nichomachean Ethics, and equating &quot;happiness,&quot; with what he calls &quot;eudaimonea,&quot; which is not to be falsely equated with a simple good feeling.

A great story. Made me think of the story in the movie &#x27;Woman in Gold&#x27; (recommended).

very nice article. The book, Man&#x27;s Search for Meaning, was listed as one of the 10 most influential books in US

Contentedness might be a more logical goal. Be emotionally open to either happiness or sadness by default.

Moral of the Story don&#x27;t be a Jerk, find your special purpose

Discussed at the time: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5123223" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=5123223</a>. This is not a dupe, because that was well over a year ago.