Chasing Happiness vs. Radiant Joy
You feed an animal. You nurture the soul. At first glance, it may seem like wordplay, but the distinction is crucial. Feeding is about survival: appetite, repetition, the never-ending cycle of hunger and satisfaction. You eat today, you will hunger tomorrow. Nurturing is something else entirely. It is about tending the root of Being, watering the ground from which essence flowers. One sustains life. The other deepens it.
Happiness, in this light, belongs to the realm of feeding. There’s nothing wrong with happiness. It’s the emotional resonance that comes when positive circumstances align — a warm meal, a kind word, a job well done. The trouble begins when happiness pairs up with desire. Then the pursuit becomes endless: the next thrill, the next purchase, the next accomplishment. It is no longer a gift of the moment but an addiction to circumstances. Happiness becomes something to chase, and like any chase, it never ends.
The framers of the Constitution didn’t mean this when they enshrined “the pursuit of happiness.” In the 18th century, happiness was understood less as pleasure and more as flourishing — closer to the Greek concept of eudaimonia: a life characterized by satisfaction, contentment, and alignment with virtue and community. It was about living fully, responsibly, with integrity. Our culture, with its consumerist heartbeat, has flattened that noble vision into a slogan for desire. Instead of pursuing fulfillment, we are trained to pursue the next fix.
Joy is of a different order. Joy is not an emotional reaction but an essential quality of the soul. It arises not because of circumstances, but because you are in direct contact with your essential nature. Joy is what shines when the veils fall away and you are simply yourself. It is Being’s delight in existence, expressed through you.
This is why A.H. Almaas describes the evolution of the soul as a movement from the animal soul to the angelic soul. The animal soul is bound to instinct, survival, and appetite. The angelic soul is transparent to Being, radiant with love, compassion, clarity, and joy. The task of life is not to starve the animal but to nurture the soul so that it may flower into its angelic nature.
Religion itself reveals a similar shift. In ages past, the sacred was mediated through tyranny, as the authority of churches and institutions claimed to control salvation. Today, it is less tyranny masquerading as charisma than it is the encouragement of insatiably chasing the drug of happiness, embodied in personalities who command devotion through spectacle and magnetism. Both are displacements. Both obscure the direct immediacy of the sacred. Whether through hierarchy or through the addictive lure of personality, the soul’s longing is redirected away from its true source.
And yet, joy is not extinguished. It does not belong to institutions or leaders. It belongs to essence. When you nurture the soul, joy emerges naturally — not as something attained, but as something uncovered.
But here is a sobering thought: the outer world may not stabilize. The United States may not be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. The most pessimistic scenario is one in which authoritarianism triumphs and spreads, until we find ourselves living in something akin to a sci-fi empire, ruled by a tyrannical leader. History has shown us how quickly societies can swing in this direction.
If that happens, happiness as desire will be fragile, fleeting, and shattered by circumstance. But joy, as essence, remains untouchable. Across history, under tyrants and empires, joy has still broken through — in song, in love, in presence, in the smallest intimacies.
The real question, then, is not whether democracy endures or empire rises, whether freedom triumphs or authoritarianism spreads. The real question is: what are you investing yourself in? The endless pursuit of happiness as desire? Or the fulfillment of happiness as the deeper joy of your essential being?
Empires may rule the world. But joy — quietly, patiently — will always rule the heart.
John Harper is a Diamond Approach® teacher, Enneagram guide, and student of human development whose work bridges psychology, spirituality, and deep experiential inquiry. His newest book, Nurturing Essence: A Compass for Essential Parenting, invites parents to rediscover the soul beneath behavior. He is also the author of The Enneagram World of the Child: Nurturing Resilience and Self-Compassion in Early Life and Good Vibrations: Primordial Sounds of Existence, available on Amazon.