Sources of Happiness

One of my favorite inspirational sources has become the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, Lord Johnathan Sachs. As with so many inspirational sources, I first learned of him via an “On Being” (formerly "Speaking of Faith") podcast. The podcast reproduced a dialogue that also included His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Reverend Dr. Katherine Jefferts Schori (of the US Episcopal Church) and a leading Islamic Scholar, Professor Dr. Seyyed Hossein Nasr of George Washington University in Washington DC. The topic of the mid-October 2010 public dialogue, held in Atlanta Georgia, was “Pursuing Happiness.”

I was washing dishes after breakfast and made what may have been incomplete notes of Rabbi Sachs’ remarks, but the essence was this: “In my view,” he said, “there are three sources of happiness: (1) doing good for others; (2) having a network of relationships with which one shares a sense of community; and (3) a sense that one’s life makes a difference.

“What is surprising,” Rabbi Sachs concluded, “is how different these sources are from the hundreds - perhaps thousands - of advertising messages we hear and see each day about the sources of happiness.”