By D. John Dyben

The man sitting before me in my office was 41 years old, a successful business executive, a family man with a wife and three children. His face was washed out. His eyes were red and showed fear and uncertainty.

We chatted about his trip to the rehab center and his decision to come, and then I asked, “What do you want?”

He looked puzzled. “You mean from you? From this program?”

I did not answer.

“I guess I want to keep my wife and children. I want to keep my job. I may lose both because of my drinking. Is that what you mean?”

Again I did not respond. There was a pause.

“I just want to be happy.”

“You know how to do that,” I said. He looked at me quizzically.

“You can buy yourself a new car,” I explained.

“You can watch your favorite TV show. You can mix yourself a martini. These will make you happy.”

An epiphany
This interview was unfolding just as hundreds of others have. The surprise on his face when I told him he knew how to be happy was the beginning of his epiphany. His pursuit of happiness all his years had only gotten him a threat from his wife that she would leave and a warning from his doctor that his body was failing.

Each of us can be happy, understood as external pleasures, but there are two things wrong with this. This type of happiness is only temporary, and then we have to find something else. And when the events in our lives are not as we would like, we are unhappy.

The word “happiness” comes from the Old English word “hap,” which means luck. My definition of happiness is feeling good based on my circumstances. Happiness is not a bad thing. If someone were to come into my office to tell me I had won a million dollars, I am going to be real happy, and there is nothing wrong with that. When I sing a song with my daughter, I feel really good, but it is feeling good because of external circumstances.

Happiness itself is not the problem. The problem comes when I live my life in the pursuit of happiness, believing that I must always feel good or avoid feeling bad. When it’s my life goal. How to pursue it is very simple: if it feels good, do it. Whatever you think will make you happy probably will. And then you have to find the next thing and the next thing.

What the man sitting before me really wanted was peace. Peace means the primary goal in life is not feeling good or avoiding negative feelings. Peace is when I look you in the eye and say there are things in my life right this moment about which I am not happy, but I am still okay. I am anchored. I am solid.

Stormy weather
Think about people living on two houseboats. One houseboat is called the pursuit of happiness; the other is the pursuit of peace. The person living on the pursuit of happiness is always running away from any storm, always trying to find the perfect place where the sun will be beating down on him just right. He is always looking.

The person on the pursuit of peace also likes it better when it’s not stormy. He still likes feeling good, but when the storm does come, he does not run, he stays anchored. He believes he can weather it. If you are living life in the pursuit of peace you can make it through the storms knowing they will go away. If an addict believes the most important thing in life is to feel good, he will almost always go back to drugs and alcohol. These are consistent with the pursuit of happiness.

I have never had trouble with alcohol or drugs, but I have had my own awakening about the pursuit of peace. Early in my career I was deeply troubled and unhappy. I thought this might be burnout from long hours working as a minister with teenagers addicted to heroin. I was miserable, and I was making everyone around me miserable. In this sense, I was not much different from the people I see whose symptom of unhappiness is the abuse of alcohol or drugs.

What I came to see was that I was validating myself with external things. I was pursuing happiness, and for me that meant yet one more degree or the next job. Each achievement made me happy – for a time, but then I needed some new credential.

At that time in my life I loved pushing my five-year-old daughter on the swing. There were times when I was completely enraptured, completely present with her in the moment. I think also of times when I was a million miles a way, going through all the worries, living in my problems, wondering how I was going to fix everything. This is the problem with the pursuit of happiness; it disconnects me from life rather than allowing me to be connected to life right here and now.

If it feels good
The pursuit of happiness is easy — do whatever feels good at the moment. The pursuit of peace is hard — it requires developing a healthy spirituality. Think about physical fitness. Eating right and exercising does not make me happy. I like to eat. I do not like to exercise. But I want my body to be whole and healthy. And that means discipline at the table and at exercise. Likewise, the pursuit of peace requires spiritual discipline and spiritual exercises.

This is good, because it means the spiritual life is attainable. It is not mysterious or magical. It is something anyone can understand and do. You do not go to the gym and tell a trainer you want a perfect body by the end of the week. You have to do the exercises regularly. Soon you will see a difference, although you will never reach perfection.

The most effective spiritual exercises I have ever found are in the 12 steps, the spiritual principles of acceptance, honesty, internal exploration, and sharing what I find about me with others, prayer, meditation, service, humility. These principles make me spiritually strong and whole. When I am daily exercising the spiritual principles in the 12 steps, I am pursuing peace.

Probably the most important spiritual principle is honesty with myself and others. When I am not honest I always have to move around. When I am dishonest I am desperately trying to avoid what is in front of me. If I am pursuing peace, I am dealing with what is in front of me.

Going with the flow
Acceptance is another very important principle. Recently the center where I work merged with a larger one. The questions began: What would happen to me? Would I still have a job? Being honest with myself about what was happening and accepting it allowed me to be at peace, even though I had no idea what the outcome would be. So these spiritual disciplines have practical application in the real world. It would be easier, however – if only for the moment – to deny and resist the inevitable  change.

Think of a brick wall. If you strike it with a hammer, it will resist. That’s like happiness: when something I do not like comes my way I have to resist it so that I do not become unhappy. A brick wall will resist, but because it resists it will eventually be chipped away and crumble.

Now think of a cork floating in water. You can hit it with all your might and it won’t resist at all, but then it will pop right back up. That is peace. Things I do not like are going to come into my life, but I am going to roll with them. Because I am able to roll with them, I’m going to pop right back up.

Peace is learning to go with the flow. One of the things that helped me when I left vocational church ministry was being able to look at all of philosophy and all of religion and all of the wisdom that has been blessed this planet over time. I found there are some systems that have a lot to teach that I missed by being in one specific religious mindset. I’m a Methodist, a Christian, but I am learning from all wisdom traditions. For example, there’s an element of Taoism called Wu Wei. It means strength without resistance. Wu Wei is like a cork floating in water. It is going with the flow.

Wu Wei is key to the pursuit of peace above happiness. It fits Christianity and any other religion I have studied. From my own Christian tradition: Consider the birds of the air, the lilies of he field. They neither sow nor reap, but they’re okay. Wu Wei also fits recovery very well.

Learning to walk
The man sitting in my office was beginning to relax. Here was something that made sense, even if he did not grasp it all. He, too, had been caught up in changes at work and had tried to resist them by grabbing his Rolodex in panic and seeking some kind of external validation that everything would be okay. Just as I once did, he thought the goal of life was happiness, and the only thing he knew to do was sign up for one more management training seminar and add one more contact to his network and buy the newest model car, and then soothe the anxiety with a bottle. What he did not know, as I once did not know, is that there was another pursuit that could actually work.

In the coming days we would explore the other disciplines: gratitude, forgiveness, service to others. Like a child learning to walk, his first steps would be small and halting. And yet they would begin moving him toward his true goal.

“I cannot believe I have wanted the wrong thing my entire life,” he said.

“You,” I said, “are not alone.”

John Dyben, a board certified mental health and addictions professional, is clinical director at the Hanley Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. He supervises all residential and outpatient treatment, as well as Spiritual Care and Wellness programs.