End The War On Happy New Year

My colleague and dear friend, the esteemed psychoanalyst Todd Essig, has declared war on the blessing that millions will share today: "Happy New Year!"
A happy new year is not good enough, Dr. Essig says, and he has a study to back him up. To be a good year, they contend, a year must be more than just happy—it must also be meaningful:
What we know is that happiness is about the current moment, about having one’s wants and needs satisfied. It is a feeling, a good feeling. A happy life would string together lots of satisfied, happy moments. A meaningful life is different. It’s about who you’ve been and who you want to be, about creative expression and moral choice, about what you give to others.
Dr. Essig is an expert in these matters, and I am merely a happy amateur. But I have an idea of happiness that eliminates the need for a separate concept of meaningfulness. My idea of happiness is already meaningful. And my idea of happiness is not my invention. It's ancient and it's in view of most of the world.
What's more, I think the good feeling described by the experts is not happiness at all.
The study Dr. Essig sites, from the Journal of Positive Psychology, relies on a survey, and it seems to perpetuate confusion about happiness in the minds of the survey participants.
Scientists who have tried to define happiness seem to have done little to clear up this confusion, which is so common in our culture.
The confusion is that we think we'll be happy if we just get what we want and need. But anyone who's tried to get what he wants and needs knows that even when he gets what he wants and needs, he still wants and needs more.
Dr, Essig offers the true example of a billionaire and his trophy-wife, already loaded with properties, who set out to build the largest house in America. They want the largest house in America, and they think they'll be happy when they get it.
But I would say that what they get from a house isn't happiness at all, it's just a fix.
Would we call a junkie happy when he gets his fix? If so, then we would have to say that the cause of happiness is heroin.
The problem with heroin is the same as the problem with houses and other stuff you can get with money: the high is temporary, fraught with anxiety, and then you need more.
Dr. Essig acknowledges this problem. He says, "When life is an endless series of present moments, each of which must be constructed to yield maximum pleasure, there is no protection against the inevitability of loss and struggle."
But I don't think the hazard here is our focus on the present moment. The hazard comes from seeking happiness in the wrong places, in places where happiness does not exist, in stuff we want and in stuff we think we need—in stuff we can get with money.
All the stuff in the world won't protect us against the inevitability of loss and struggle.
Unless I missed a major headline recently, we still all get sick and die. Every one of us will lose everything we have in this world.
We approach happiness when we accept this fact, which empowers us to let go of the addict's craving for the next fix. Once we accept the inevitability of loss, we no longer seek happiness by acquiring things we know we're going to lose. We begin to seek happiness where it truly resides.
The study says, "Having enough money to buy what one wants and needs was important for happiness but unconnected to meaning."
If money were important to happiness, rich people would be happy, and poor people unhappy. But often the opposite is true.
The actor Jim Carrey once said: "I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer."
In that quote, Jim Carrey covers most of the qualities that Dr. Essig and the study attribute to both happiness and meaningfulness.
Jim Carrey is rich, he's famous, he has a great rags-to-riches backstory and a brilliant future. He has expressed himself creatively and prolifically. Having accomplished all that, he tells us that none of it will get you happiness.
The study says there is one other cause of meaningfulness—service to others. But I would say that service to others is a cause of happiness.
The great Bengali writer Rabindranath Tagore says it better than I:
I slept and dreamt
that life was joy.
I awoke and saw
that life was service.
I acted and behold,
service was joy.
Service is joy because it frees us, just like acceptance does, from the addict's cycle.
We might set out to do service because it looks meaningful on a resume, but if we do actual service we discover that we share a vital unity with those we serve.
Service reminds us that we participate in something bigger than the self. Service reminds us that we are all essentially the same. Service dissolves the illusion of separateness between us.
Thus, service helps us to see that life is not a competition to build the biggest house, and so it steers us away from the addict's fix. Service enables us to see that happiness cannot be found on the shelves at Target, but it can be found within our hearts.
I'm all for wars on holidays, but I think this one's unnecessary. Happy New Year!