3 Getting Lost on the Way to Happiness

      Not until we are lost do we begin to understand ourselves. —Henry David Thoreau

      Imagine for a moment that you decide to travel by car to a particular city—let’s say Miami Beach, Florida—and you buy a map to help direct you. You study the map and mark all the roads you have to drive to get to Miami, which is 1,500 miles from where you live. Then you begin your long journey. As the days and hours pass, you eagerly look for the signs on the highway that will indicate where you are and reassure you that you’re going in the right direction: MIAMI: 1000 MILES, MIAMI: 500 MILES, MIAMI: 300 MILES, MIAMI: 50 MILES and finally MIAMI: NEXT EXIT. “At last!” you think to yourself, “I have arrived.”

      Now imagine that as you enter the city, expecting warm, tropical Miami, you are shocked to find that it is bitterly cold and snowing heavily. People are rushing around bundled up in scarves, gloves and overcoats. Ice covers every inch of the frozen ground. No matter where you look, you can see no signs whatsoever of anything resembling an ocean or a beach. When you ask the passersby if this is Miami, they look at you strangely, as if you were crazy.

      You sit there in your car, utterly bewildered. You stare at the map, which you followed diligently. You look out the window at the snow. You stare back at the map, shaking your head in disbelief. Obviously, you’re not in Miami. But if not, then … where the heck are you? Was your map wrong? Were the road signs incorrect? “How did I get HERE?” you ask yourself. And you feel as if you must be going mad.

       In the process of living, there often comes a time when we suddenly look around at where we’ve ended up in our lives and it looks nothing like what we expected it to. We remember mapping out where we wanted to go with our relationships, our work, and our accomplishments, but instead, we inexplicably find ourselves in places and circumstances that bear no resemblance to where we hoped to be. We feel like a stranger in a strange land, except that this strange land is the life we are leading. Somehow, we’ve gotten lost on the way to happiness.

      For each of us there was a starting point in our adult life when we designed a blueprint of dreams we hoped would lead us to a happy future. Sometimes we are very conscious of this personal life map, setting specific goals for ourselves and attempting to achieve them: “I will get married, have two children and live happily ever after.” “I will start my own business, become financially independent and retire in Arizona.” “I will go to college and earn a Ph.D. and become a successful research scientist.” Other parts of our life map are less conscious or even unconscious: “I want be more successful than my brother.” “I always want to be the one in control in my relationships.” “I want enough money so that I never have to depend on a man for anything.” We’re often not even aware that these subterranean desires exist, yet they, too, guide our actions and determine our choices.