The Manner of Happiness

Elder Holland gave a talk at BYU-Idaho a few years ago in which he talked about happiness.  He made this observation about our search for happiness in our lives: “We know one thing for sure: happiness is not easy to find running straight for it.  It is usually too elusive, too ephemeral, too subtle.  If you haven't learned it already, you will learn in the years ahead that most times happiness comes to us when we least expect it, when we are busy doing something else.  Happiness is almost always a by-product of some other endeavor.  One of my favorite writers from my university days said, ‘Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.’”  The point seems to be that when we focus on being happy we end up doing things that satisfy us in the short term and don’t bring the deep satisfaction we really seek.  The principle seems to be that which the Savior taught about following Him, “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:24).

               The Book of Mormon has a lot to teach us about how we can most effectively pursue happiness.  One principle that it emphasizes is that sin does not lead to happiness.  As Alma taught his son Corianton, “wickedness never was happiness” (Alma 41:10).  When Mormon was leading the Nephites in battle in his day, he wrote of why they were sorrowing: “The Lord would not always suffer them to take happiness in sin” (Mormon 2:13).  Samuel the Lamanite said essentially the same thing to the wicked Nephites of his day: “Ye have sought for happiness in doing iniquity, which thing is contrary to the nature of that righteousness which is in our great and Eternal Head” (Helaman 13:38).  True lasting happiness simply does not come from sin and wickedness.  The corollary of this of course is that happiness is a natural extension of righteousness, which the Book of Mormon also makes clear.  King Benjamin, for example, taught, “I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God.  For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness” (Mosiah 2:41).  Lehi also taught simply, “If there be no righteousness there be no happiness” (2 Nephi 2:13).  Keeping the commandments brings us to a “happy state” now and “never-ending happiness” in the world to come.  

               Another teaching that the Book of Mormon gives us is that humility is connected to happiness.  As Ammon rejoiced over the conversion of so many of the Lamanites, Mormon commented, “Behold, this is joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness” (Alma 27:18).  Jacob similarly connected happiness with humility: “Save they shall… consider themselves fools before God, and come down in the depths of humility, he will not open unto them.  But the things of the wise and the prudent shall be hid from them forever—yea, that happiness which is prepared for the saints” (2 Nephi 9:42-43).  Happiness is prepared for those who will come before God in humility, choosing with their agency to reject sin and follow Him.  Humbling ourselves, rejecting sin, and choosing righteousness may not always seem in the short term like the best way to be happy, but these are what help us to truly live "after the manner of happiness" (2 Nephi 5:27).