HAPPINESS IN A SECULAR AGE
During one of my teaching apostolates, a grade eight student once asked me how we live in the seminary without cellphones. I replied quite simply that anyone can live without a cellphone. At the time, it seemed like an ordinary question and an equally ordinary answer. Yet as I thought more deeply about it afterward, I realized how revealing the exchange was. For many young people today, and even for adults, it is difficult to imagine life without constant access to technology. I must admit that there are really times that I long for phone inside the seminary just to leisurely scroll through the screen for pastime. In a sense, gadgets have become symbols of connection, entertainment, and even identity. To live without them seems unthinkable. When I reflected on my response, I saw that while we can indeed live without such devices, we cannot live without meaning and a sense of happiness. The deeper question hidden behind the student’s curiosity is not really about cellphones, but about what makes life truly worth living.
This encounter opened for me a reflection on the human longing for happiness. All of us desire to be happy, but often our understanding of happiness is confused with pleasure, possessions, or fleeting emotions. True happiness, however, runs deeper. It is not something accidental or shallow but something woven very deeply in our being. We are not only capable of happiness, we are made for it. This longing never seems fully satisfied in this life. This paradox of being made for happiness yet often feeling restless and incomplete is at the heart of the human journey.
I remember what our past recollection master told us about the perfect primordial kiss which really sparked my attention. Ronald Rolheiser shared this idea of why our hearts can never be fully satisfied by worldly things? Mystics and philosophers suggest that it is because we carry within us the memory of something eternal. Before we entered this world, they say, God placed upon our souls a primordial kiss, an imprint of perfect love, truth, and beauty. Although we cannot consciously recall this moment, our souls never forget it completely. All our longings, desires, and searches for happiness are ultimately echoes of that kiss. We measure every human love, every experience of beauty, every encounter with goodness against the memory of that original embrace.
In one rather interesting version of this notion, it is taught that God put the soul into the body only when the baby was already fully formed in its mother’s womb. Immediately after placing the soul into the body, God would seal off the memory of its pre-existence by gently pressing a finger upon the lips of the child. That is why we have a small cleft just above the center of our lips. It is, according to this tradition, the place where God’s finger sealed our lips from ever speaking of that primordial memory. Perhaps this also explains why, whenever we are struggling to remember something, our index finger instinctively rises to that cleft under our nose, we are, in some mysterious way, trying to retrieve that original memory, the faint trace of the primordial kiss.
This is why even the most beautiful moments of life, falling in love, achieving a dream, experiencing joy with family or friends, still carry with them a trace of incompleteness. They remind us of what is possible but do not fully contain it. Our souls dimly remember perfect love and perfect beauty, yet in this life, we only encounter them in glimpses. This creates within us both a deep joy and a deep ache: joy because we sense what is truly real, and ache because we long to encounter it again in its fullness.
This idea helps explain why happiness always feels both attainable and elusive. It is attainable because we can experience real joy, satisfaction, and meaning here and now. It is elusive because these experiences always point beyond themselves, stirring a longing that nothing finite can fully satisfy. The primordial kiss becomes both our greatest gift and our deepest burden: it assures us that perfect happiness exists, but it also reminds us that we will never fully grasp it in this world. Not until we return to the one who imprinted in us that perfect primordial kiss.
Recalling the lecture of Arthur Brooks about happiness, he emphasized that happiness is not simply a matter of feeling good or avoiding pain. Pleasure, while enjoyable, is often momentary and can even enslave us when pursued without reflection. Living only for pleasure leads to emptiness and addiction because it fails to answer the deeper questions of meaning and fulfillment. True enjoyment is pleasure transformed by memory, reflection, and the presence of others. It is not just about having a good time but about cherishing experiences that remain life-giving long after the moment has passed.
Satisfaction, too, plays an essential role in happiness. It arises not from comfort but from accomplishment, from struggling and finally achieving something meaningful. Human beings are unique in their need to struggle in order to taste joy. Whether it is in studies, work, or relationships, it is often the difficulties we endure that make the victories worthwhile. Yet satisfaction alone also fades, as each accomplishment soon gives way to the next challenge.
Meaning, however, is perhaps the deepest dimension of happiness. A person may experience pleasure and accomplishment, but without meaning, these remain hollow. To live meaningfully is to know one’s purpose and to have something or someone worth giving one’s life for. Many people today suffer from a crisis of meaning, unsure of why they exist or what their lives are for. The absence of meaning gives rise to anxiety, despair, and loneliness. The presence of meaning, on the other hand, transforms even suffering into an opportunity for growth and deeper joy.
In this sense, true happiness is not about eliminating restlessness but about directing it toward the realities that can genuinely satisfy: love, service, relationships, and faithfulness to one’s calling. The challenge is not to accumulate more but to desire well, to channel our longing toward what leads us to fullness rather than emptiness. In the Ignatian spirituality, this is a call for magis- a call for something more for the greater glory of God.
This longing for happiness is not meant to turn us inward but outward. Happiness is not selfish because it is contagious. When people encounter someone who is genuinely joyful, hopeful, and at peace, they are naturally drawn toward that person. In a society often filled with noise, anger, and division, the quiet witness of a happy life becomes a powerful form of mission. The pursuit of true happiness, rooted in love, meaning, and the memory of God’s primordial kiss, becomes a way of drawing others toward the same source of joy.
In this sense, working on one’s own happiness is not a private project but a responsibility. For my case, as a seminarian, for example, does not cultivate happiness merely for personal comfort but so that I may one day radiate joy to the people I will serve. People are not drawn to faith by arguments or doctrines alone but by the witness of lives transformed by joy. This reveals the true essence of a Christian, people who knows Christ, knows to whom and where He belongs. Happiness, then, becomes not only a personal longing but also a form of service.
The simple question of a student “How do you live without cellphones?” turned into a deeper reflection on what human beings can and cannot live without. We can live without gadgets, possessions, and many comforts, but we cannot live without happiness. Yet happiness is not simply handed to us, it is something we must pursue, choose, cultivate, and receive with openness. The root of it all is gratitude, as my spiritual director puts it, "radical gratitude leads to a joyful attitude." It is composed of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning, but ultimately, it flows from the memory of that primordial kiss of love imprinted upon our souls.
Our restlessness is a gift because it reminds us that we are made for more. It prevents us from settling for lesser joys and keeps us searching for the fullness that only the eternal can provide. Happiness, then, is not about escaping restlessness but about letting it lead us home, to the One whose kiss began our journey and whose embrace will complete it.
