What Makes You HappySýnishorn

It’s Not About You

Yesterday, we looked at Jesus’ list of counterintuitive things we can do to be happy. In today’s passage from Mark, Jesus makes what might be his most illogical, outrageous claim about what will make us happy. 

The gist of his message is: If you want to be happy, make someone else happy instead.

As strange as it sounds, one of the best things you can do for you is to quit doing so much for you. Maybe you’ve experienced this before when you volunteered somewhere or worked on a service project. You found that when you tried to make someone else’s life better, yours seemed to get better too. When you gave yourself up, you ended up liking yourself better. When you poured yourself out, you ended up full. 

How can this be? Divine design. 

God created us to be healthiest and happiest when we’re “one another-ing one another”—when we’re loving one another, caring for one another, forgiving one another, and carrying one another’s burdens. 

Selflessness leads to happiness.

It doesn’t seem to make sense. Consequently, most of us don’t do it. Or we don’t do it often enough. We say we don’t have time to volunteer. We’re too busy to serve. But the hours we spend trying to exercise, acquire, and consume our way to happiness—the hours we aren’t leveraging for others—are undermining the very happiness we’re chasing. 

So, who can you serve? It may not make sense right now, but your answer to that question is actually your answer to the question: What makes you happy?