Happiness

October 1, 2025| Previous Issue, Burpham Church

Rev James Hanson, Vicar, Burpham Church

I was asked recently, why are you always so happy? I replied: actually I don’t always feel it – but perhaps when you see me, I find it really easy to smile, because a smile conveys so much in any language, any culture or place.

Or maybe – just seeing you brings a lightness and joy to me. Other times, I have a happy place I love to be, which brings peace, relief and joy (as in the picture). Do you have a happy place? What does the word happiness conjure up for you? There has been much in the recent days about Trump’s attacks on US colleges like Harvard, and restrictions placed on them harshly. Reading this reminded me of is their legendary happiness study, which has gathered data from people over 85 years on what makes us happy. I’ve known secondary schools around which have offered courses in happiness, and I’ve even brought some of their wisdom into various assemblies I have given over the years, in asking this fundamental question.

But what do we mean by happiness? Perhaps it is easier to define by what makes us unhappy, thereby we rule those out or try to patch them up in a quest for happiness. Poverty, ill-health, anxiety and mental ill-health, work stress, cost of living, broken relationships, lack of sleep, worries about family members, singleness, grief. There are so many things that make us unhappy, and sadly we can’t often fix many of them readily. The Harvard study concluded that none of career achievements, money, exercise or healthy diets brought about prolonged happiness. That won’t surprise us when we read about the dire place of mental health those lottery winners, or sudden celebrities find themselves in years after being catapulted into a radically changed life. Neither did they conclude that solving worries relating to money, work, sleep, health etc brought immediate happiness. What they did discover was that positive relationships (social fitness) brought the greatest gain in happiness, and its knock-on effects were in living longer too. Sadly, I see all too often fractures in family relationships, breaks in childhood friendships and breakdown in trust between people over sometimes really small matters. How can we, as a community, really take the time and care to invest in relationships positively, and help bring reconciliation and healing where it is needed.

For me, as a man of faith, I don’t often dwell on happiness as a concept – nor do I talk about it quite as much as before. The words I reach for would be contentment (inner peace), joy (happiness bubbling up from inside), fulfilment (I’ve found my true calling and purpose) and hope (I know where I am going, and the future doesn’t worry me
at all). So much of what drives me inside, I long for others to see on the outside – otherwise I’m not really witness to any of what drives me at all. What I long for others to see when they find a smile, is someone who lives by those Godly character traits of: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, faithfulness, good-ness, gentleness and self-control. Why?
Because that is the fruit I am called to bear through following Jesus. Easier said than done, but because I am fulfilled, at peace, called and live in hope, then my heart is full and bursts out with that radiance of what others might call: true happiness. But, it shouldn’t be drawing attention to me or any other person – I don’t want to do anything except point to the one who shapes and forms me; Jesus. He is the one who restores the broken-hearted. In him I find my true happiness.

Blessings, Rev James