Reconsidering and Re-learning happiness

One of the modules I currently teach at my home institution, Scottish Baptist College, is called Christianity and Culture. Students come from a number of denominational backgrounds, different geographical locations within Scotland’s Central Belt, and with truly diverse life experience.

The age profile range includes school leavers, those exploring ministry as a second career, and those near or in retirement wishing to engage in issues relating to faith and its practices in contemporary society. As our ethos of teaching encourages students to pursue links between their life experience and their present studies, the Christianity and Culture module provides them with an opportunity to explore a whole raft of intersections of faith and particular context(s). For me as a teacher, that means enjoying a whole feast of topics students choose to work on as their project, depending on their interests and circles of friendships: for example, religious function of the game of football; the ways the millennial generation does community; dominating narratives in competitive card games; spiritual themes that can be discerned in the practice of tattooing and body art, and so on!

For my own part, I will share with my students one aspect of contemporary culture that I have been working on: Western culture’s fascination with, and perceptions of, happiness. The word keeps appearing in popular discourse such as songs as well as in scientific studies, and in a whole array of self-help literature. Even governments are coming to acknowledge happiness as an important aspect to consider in politics and policy-making. Of course, this is by no means a novelty, but the current interest in happiness is in many ways unprecedented.

Discussions typically acknowledge a variety of avenues leading to happiness: having children, personal development, financial freedom, health or spiritual practice (and indeed the insight that a happy life involves a good balance between different sources of happiness). However, one motif of a happy life has dominated much of the modern psyche: the idea of romantic love and coupledom. Whether or not expressed in the form of marriage, it has been guided by a perception that ‘being a couple’ is necessary and, indeed, crucial to happiness, at least for the most of us. Valentine’s Day, celebrated only a few weeks ago, provides a great illustration. I would argue that such image of ultimate human happiness has come to represent a particular type of ideology, both within and outside various communities of faith.

This ideology is now contested by the unprecedented rise of the number of single people and the emergence of alternative styles of family structures. Yet rather than a cause for alarm, the uncharted territory of the rise of singlehood is actually an opportunity to reconsider and re-learn happiness in different settings and personal circumstances. That will involve paying attention to different cultural practices people participate in, including those explored by my students. These practices may seem to be comparatively small, but they can give us a good clue as to the narratives of happiness we humans tell by engaging in them.

Lina Toth

Rev Dr Lina Toth (Andronoviene) is Assistant Principal and Lecturer in Practical Theology at the Scottish Baptist College, University of the West of Scotland, UK. A musician, public speaker as well as a theologian, she teaches, writes and speaks on various aspects of social ethics, spirituality, leadership, and theology of culture. Although she is embedded in an academic context, she also has a particular interest in and passion for lifelong learning, and has been involved in various projects promoting non-formal learning opportunities.