Ensue/Pursue

We have referred to the difference between ensue and pursue.  Americans have been informed from the founding fathers that they are in the pursuit of happiness.  The implication is taken that happiness is out there someplace on the move, and we are pursuing it.  If we are intrepid detectives we are supposed to find it.  It is something to be found perhaps at the end of some rainbow road.   Many believing that wealth is the road may find that it doesn’t guarantee happiness.  Stories abound of men and women winning great riches, believing they would be happy, only to find enough troubles that they wish they had never gained financial wealth.  Despite all the warnings, masses of persons seek out false-promising routes.

The prominent Jewish psychiatrist/neurologist, Viktor Frankl, gave up opportunities for escape from Hitlerian atrocities, and denial of fame for a time, by choosing to serve his family and fellow prisoners.  Ultimately everything was lost in the concentration camp, including his wife, children and parents – except for his own life.  After the end of the War, he gave himself to the study of the minds and conducts of human beings, and soon began to defend the concept that happiness is the inevitable result of doing the right thing.  Happiness ensues, which is to say it follows what one becomes in the guided life.  Frankl argued that happiness is pursuing the human race, not the race pursuing happiness.  He was happy to have personally lost everything for his family, in that he could provide some of the hope and light that they needed to bear the horrors, and to die.  Frankl found that happiness was inevitable for those who pursued the course in life meant for them, and also that they recognized it so to know what is occurring in life context.

I have known persons who will never find happiness, no matter what they do.  They do not have the inner recognition of it.  In some way they have been jaundiced with distraction, so not up to receiving the happiness, joy, contentment, and peace that pursue each life, yearning to enter in.  I was drawn to interest in Frankl’s ideas because he focused on my own emphasis in the search for truth – meaning.  What does all this mean?  Not only do I want to go for life’s future, but I want to know why I should go for it.  I must repeat here.  Frankl believed it could be found in love and creative work.  When he lost his family in the Holocaust, he lost his whole family.  The only recovery would be in creative work relating to the benefit of mankind.  Frankl believed that if the person knows the why of his existence he can bear the how in achieving it – more of this on another Page.  His book, Man’s Search for Meaning, written soon after the Holocaust, gained large attention generated by reality.  In 1991, the Library of Congress declared it to be one of the ten most influential books in the United States – 45 years after its initial publication.

If the above implications are true, our search is for meaning, not for happiness.   Understanding and acting on our meaning and mission we are going to be happy.  The Apostle Paul, in public degradation, a prisoner whose life was repeatedly threatened, was given leave to speak.  He made no complaint, did not berate anyone, but gained silence by an upraised hand and opened his remarks with a positive statement: I think myself happy, King Agrippa, because I will answer for myself . . . .  The Apostle was entirely in control, felt his freedom under God even as the chains rustled on his body, and so he began his magnificent review of his life to the point of present circumstances.  No matter what the court decides, he is this person, and glad to the point of happiness to make sure everyone knows he wouldn’t change what he had become and was doing.  Of all persons present, Paul was the most fulfilled.  Cast in the context of a defense he was offering Christian witness to the king.  What could be better than that for a Christian?  The apostle was the happiest man in the crowd, detailing the most important matter of life – the gospel of Jesus Christ.  The words at the end of the presentation prove the point: King Agrippa, believest thou the prophets? I know thou believest.  Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. (Acts 26:27-28)  Paul even overcame the interruption of Festus, pressing on to challenge the King.  In the Gospel the Apostle was happy, almost giddy.  Paul was free: Agrippa was in the dock.  Paul made clear to Agrippa that, except for the chains, Paul would want his meaning to also become Agrippa’s. What a scene it was – and is.