Consciencebound

Happiness is a Moral Obligation?

What do you think of when you see a person who’s life revolves around being happy? Do you think of them as selfish? Self Absorbed? Maybe a little shallow? These are all thoughts that I know I have had at one time or another when considering the morality of happiness. We often think that morality is more about doing what is right than doing what makes you happy, and this is certainly true to some extent. Often we need to choose the right thing to do because it is right without any concern of whether or not it makes us happy or not. If we are happy when doing the right thing it is a bonus but we SHOULD NOT be doing it because it makes us happy as it almost seems like it kills the morality of the act.

Denis Prager is a radio talk show how and columnist who wrote a column this week entitled Happiness is a Moral Obligation. In this article he makes the case that happiness is one of the chief virtues and that it should be sought out and maintained at all costs. His reasoning is that our moods of happiness or unhappiness effect those around us in a profound way and we can often be the cause of another person’s unhappiness because we are unhappy ourselves. A context where I think this is obviously the case in my own life is in a customer service environment where an unhappy sales person can pretty much kill the sale. If you work in an environment where you deal with customers on a regular basis, you have to learn to be happy at least on the outside no matter what you are feeling like on the inside. If you happen to be having a bad day and you let that effect the way that you treat your clients, you are putting your relationship with those clients in jeopardy and a good business person knows this and will act happy even when they are not for the sake of the business. Nobody wants to go into a retail establishment and have to deal with the sour emotions of an employee who is having a bad day.

So what about in our personal relationships? Is it not even more important to consider the thoughts and feelings of those around us in our personal lives and to choose to be happy and even when we may not be? Or, shouldn’t we be trying to do the things in life that make us happy so that we can be that much more of a positive influence on those around us and on the community at large? These are certainly serious things to consider. I know that I often want to be honest at all costs about my beliefs or my feelings, and as a result, I can punish those around me with my thoughts or my mood when I don’t consider how I am effecting them.

I think of times where I have worked with people who just really hated their job and it showed on a daily basis as they complained about every little thing that went wrong. I know that I have also been that person at times where I was in a situation that I did not like or where I worked for a company that I did not like. The bottom line is that if you don’t like what you are doing for a living, you should do all that you can to find what you DO like to do for a living and do that. By staying in the same place that does not make you happy only causes pain and suffering for everyone around you. Whether you think that God made us to do certain things better than others or you think that your natural personality and disposition is just better suited to do a certain kind of job, the thing to do is to spend all of your energy in getting to a place where you can spend your working years doing something that you are passionate about and that makes you happy. In a sense, it is the best thing that you can do for your coworkers, your family, your friends, your customers… and yourself.

To read Denis Prager’s column go here

Jeff Lord

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