Finding joy brings more happiness than the empty pursuit of pleasure

By David McElroy · June 21, 2018

I see God in trees.

I see our Creator in sunsets and flowers and children’s eyes. I see this Universal Spirit in beauty all around me. When I watch clouds or stars, I see creative intent which matches the most breathtaking art of man. And when I see and feel a thunderstorm racing toward me across a valley, I feel connected to all of nature.

In those moments of intense joy at the experience of this world, I feel love. Something pours through me like “waves of liquid love,” in the memorable phrase of 19th century evangelist Charles Finney when he described his first encounter with God.

I don’t care what you call it. I call it God. I call it my Creator. You might call it Universal Spirit or just Nature. Whatever your theology or belief, almost everyone has experienced this deep joy at some point. But most of us quickly leave the experience behind.

We forget that we can find more happiness in the joy of a tree or a sunset than we will ever find in the pursuit of cold and soulless physical pleasures alone.

People everywhere seem to be in a mad rush to have fun, but the things they do to “have fun” seem to leave them dissatisfied and constantly searching for something more. They throw themselves into hedonistic frenzies — jumping from one artificial high to the next. They use various recreational drugs — chiefly alcohol — to deaden their senses and their thoughts so they can briefly be “free” to do things which they will later regret.

So many of the people I know act as though another drunken weekend or another wild spree of sex or another expensive vacation or another bit of power or prestige will finally make them happy.

On their own, there’s nothing wrong with most of the things they want to do. There’s nothing wrong with most forms of pleasure. Sex can be the most intimate thing two people ever enjoy, something like a spiritual experience, in the right context. Vacations can be wonderful and meaningful. Even power and prestige can be useful.

But none of those things will bring a human long-lasting happiness.

The things that bring real happiness are those things which connect us to those we love and to the reality of Nature and its God.

When I experience joy, I experience God.

And that kind of joy doesn’t come from the frenzied pursuit of happiness through physical pleasures. Happiness is “an inside job,” because that’s where we experience joy.

The tree you see above is in my front yard. It’s massive and it gives me some understanding of why the Druids might have worshipped trees — or at least the spirit of the trees. When I walk out of my house, I’m always confronted with this beauty and majesty — and I can’t help but experience just a touch of joy — an actual, physical feeling — in the heart beating in my chest.

But I’m prone to forget that joy is all around me, ready for me to experience it when I want. Instead, I focus so many times on the driver I’m angry with on the highway. I focus on the perceived flaws in others, especially in how they treat me, of course. I focus on all the things I don’t yet have in my life.

And when I do that, I forget about joy — and I lose sight of who God is.

There’s so much joy and beauty and wonder in this world. There are people who want to share that joy with us — people who want to give us love and experience connection with us. But we so often isolate ourselves from the right people, make choices that leave us empty and cold, and pursue paths toward carnal pleasures alone.

The Spirit I know as God is in every part of this universe. I see Him in galaxies and in microscopic quantum fields of probability and in the wonder of life’s constant creation and re-creation.

I can experience more joy — and more of God — in the trees of my front yard than I’ll ever find in pursuing pleasure. I just have to remember to open my eyes and soften my heart.

Share on Social Networks

If you have problems with high blood pressure, I’d like to encourage you to consider making serious changes to your diet. There might be some people who don’t have any choice but to start taking prescription medications for high blood pressure, but I’d like to tell you that I have completely eliminated my issue by eliminating all sugar and almost all carbohydrates. (A couple of months ago, my blood pressure hit 185/144, which was dangerously high — considered stage 3 hypertension.) By completely changing my eating habits, I’m down 22 pounds and my blood pressure is now in the “ideal” range — without taking any medication. In addition, I sleep better and I have more energy. Getting away from the sugar-laden mess that we generally refer to as “highly processed food” has been a life-changer for me. Now my challenge is to avoid slipping back into old habits — by eating in the dangerous ways that almost everyone in our society has come to see as normal.

When I first heard about this, I thought it must be satire. When I discovered it was real, I was appalled, but I still thought it must be a one-time thing from some nutty activist. But it turns out it’s the latest bit of pandering to a bunch of far-left activists who believe that a man can become a woman if he decides to claim he’s a woman. As everybody knows, men have prostate glands. Women do not. Period. End of story. Men can get prostate cancer. Women cannot. But political activists are so eager to pretend that a man claiming to be a “trans woman” is really a woman that they are insisting that “women” be included in public health messages about the issue. This is nothing but political virtue-signaling. If you’re a man, you know which parts you have. You know that you ought to be screened. Nobody is made any safer by dragging far-left gender ideology into simple medical reality.

Every time someone tries to tighten requirements around the use of absentee ballots, I hear screams from Democrats and others on the political left that such efforts are nothing but “suppression of black voters.” These protests have never made sense to me, especially because it’s never been a secret that absentee ballot fraud goes on all the time in certain areas. (Everybody knew it when I worked in politics.) The people who engage in such fraud are rarely caught — often because the local political establishment approves of the crime — but a Democrat who won a primary election in Clay County, Alabama, last year has pleaded guilty to this sort of cheating. Terry Andrew Heflin was running for a place on the Clay County Commission. He was caught ordering seven absentee ballots in the names of various voters and sending them to his post office box — after which he used the ballots to vote absentee for himself seven time. Did he have other people cast additional fraudulent ballots? We’ll never know. But in a primary in which he was able to win with only 141 votes, it wouldn’t take many fraudulent votes to change the election. The next time you hear “civil rights activists” claim that it’s just “voter suppression” to hurt blacks which is at the root of efforts to stop this fraud, remember Terry Heflin. If you care about fair and honest elections, ballot security and voter identity should matter to you.

A state legislator in Maine has been stripped of the ability to speak in the state Legislature — and her votes are not being counted on legislative issues — all because she made a truthful social media post. Rep. Laurel Libby (R-Auburn, Maine) opposes allowing boys to compete against girls’ teams in school athletics and she’s become known for making an issue of it. On Feb. 17, she posted on Facebook about a recent example that she found outrageous. She posted side-by-side photos of a boy named John who competed last year in a state track event and won fifth place against other boys two years ago — and a photo of the same boy (now called Katie) who won first place in the same event this year against girls. Whether you find this outrageous or not, Libby is clearly being honest and truthful about the objective facts of an issue of public importance. But the state Legislature censured her. Democrats decreed that she could not speak in the House and that her votes would not count on legislation — until she apologized for the outrage of telling the truth. She refused and her constituents have been unrepresented in the state House since then. The people who promote this ideology are out of touch with reality and won’t rest until they force the rest of us to join them in this delusion. But even if you agree with “trans” ideology, you should be appalled at this heavy-handed attack on political speech.

The late Steve Jobs was at the center of our culture’s transition from analog to digital. He co-founded Apple Computer. He led the team that revolutionized personal computing with the first Macintosh. As CEO of Apple, he led the development of the iPhone and later the iPad. You would think the children of such a man would be surrounded by technology. But Jobs and his wife Laureen didn’t let their children use iPads. Their home had few screens of any kind. Even though Jobs spent most of his time developing and selling Macs and iPhones and iPads, he was home with his wife and children for dinner when he was in town. The family ate together at a simple wooden table in their kitchen — and there were no digital devices or focus on popular culture. Instead, he’s said to have guided his family toward deep discussions of art, philosophy and education — with no iPads to be found. If the man who guided the development of such products chose a different path for his own children, does that suggest that his digital experience taught him that children need human connection, not screens? And does it suggest the possibility that we might be better off if we made the same choice for our families?

Related Posts