Is the Pursuit of Happiness Valid or Merely Self-Serving?

A college professor who attended one of my lectures labeled the pursuit of happiness trivial, self-indulgent and self-serving. I don’t know what his experiences may have been but I have noted that when people are happy, they are much more loving, supportive and available to themselves and to those they touch. However, most ‘reasonable’ people might argue that dealing with poverty, sickness, war and nuclear disarmament should certainly take precedence over a person’s concern for individual happiness. The implication is that happiness, as the professor claimed, is not only self-serving but limited in impact and therefore not worthy of elevated status.
And yet, the founding fathers of our own government viewed the subject so significant that they included the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as an inalienable right in the Declaration of Independence. Beyond memorizing that document and those words as students, few of us, if any, studied the subject of happiness as attentively as we did language arts, mathematics, social studies and science. We never learned to acknowledge such a focus as truly valid or valuable. Although schools offer a vast array of subject areas for study (literature, history, psychology, biology, business administration, medical science, ecology, astrophysics, nautical engineering), no primary school, high school or university offers courses in the pursuit of happiness. No wonder we have learned to disregard the subject or ‘put it aside’ for what we conclude to be more immediate and significant concerns.
The irony is that for ourselves individually and for the planet collectively there perhaps is no more pressing issue than personal happiness. To be happy (and all that ‘happy’ implies – comfortable, loving, accepting, nonjudgemental, joyful, at peace with oneself) might in fact be the most pertinent prescription for dealing with what most of us are concerned with on a global, familial, and personal basis.
So often we strive to change the world around us by changing others. We focus on external solutions to problems which can appear so overwhelming and complex that any reasonable hope of success seems remote. ‘What can I do?’ we ask ourselves in despair. ‘I’m just one person.’
Have we overlooked the most obvious and achievable approach to our problems even though at first it might appear simplistic – to be happy and loving?
If just one person changed, becomes happier, touches another with a more loving and peaceful hand, then the world has, indeed, become a more peaceful place. If each of us acknowledged him- or herself as one entity in an interlocking network of interactions (as lover, parent, friend, child, sibling, coworker, citizen), then, like the stones dropped into a pond, our evolution will cause countless ripples. Our capacity to change enables us to make a truly profound difference in the world.

– Happiness Is A Choice by Barry Neil Kaufman