The Healing Journey

November 6, 2025

A story in the New York Times had this headline, “Yale’s Most Popular Class Ever: Happiness.” It said a record number of 1200 students enrolled in a course titled, “Psychology and the Good Life” that would “teach students how to lead a happier, more satisfying life.”A few years ago, Harvard offered a similar course that was enormously popular. An Ivy League degree may ensure prestige and a well-paying job … but not necessarily happiness.

Over the past 30 years, pop psychologists have turned the pursuit of happiness into a pseudo-science. What have they discovered? The married man is happier than the single man. The middle-aged woman isn’t as happy as the middle-aged man. Republicans are happier than Democrats – or maybe it’s the other way around.

One study concluded that fame, good looks and wealth may actually be sources of anxiety and unhappiness, and that personal growth and meaningful relationships offer us a greater sense of self-fulfillment and contentment.

Everyone has a personal formula that usually includes good health, a hefty bank account, a loving spouse, respectful kids and a high-paying job with a corner office. There are countless books and articles about how to be happy, and yet we’re surrounded by unhappiness … largely because our relentless search overlooks God, who should be our primary focus.

Pope Benedict XVI had this to say, “To what extent does a life that is totally spent in achieving success, longing for prestige, and seeking commodities — to the point of excluding God from one’s horizon — truly lead to happiness? Can true happiness exist when God is left out of consideration? Experience shows that we are not happy just because our material expectations and needs are satisfied.”

Without God there is no lasting happiness, regardless of what professors at Yale and Harvard say.
©J Pisani

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