Are you biologically happy, or do you need to find meaning to your life to be happy?

In 1842, a boy named William was born into a wealthy family. Since early age, the boy suffered serious health issues: an eye problem that left him temporarily blinded, a terrible stomach condition that forced him onto a strict diet, and back pains that would plague him throughout his life.
He aspired to become a painter and practiced his craft for years and years, but every attempt failed. When he was nearly 20 years old his health problems worsened, his relationship with his father fell apart, and William began to struggle with severe bouts of depression and ​suicidal thoughts​.

William’s father used his connections to get the young man admitted to Harvard Medical School. Although smart enough to handle the course load at Harvard, but William never felt at home or at peace there. After touring a psychiatric facility one day, the young man felt he had more in common with the patients than the other doctors. Desperate, William started looking for other opportunities where he felt he belonged more, until he discovered an anthropological expedition to the Amazon rainforest. He signed on, excited to discover something new and interesting about the world​ and himself.
In those days, intercontinental travel was long, complicated and dangerous. But William made it to the Amazon. Soon upon landing, he contracted smallpox and nearly died alone in the jungle. He was rushed back to civilization and the expedition left him behind. Upon recovering from smallpox, his back spasms returned worse than ever. He was emaciated from the disease, stuck in a foreign land alone with no way to communicate, and continued to exist in a daily excruciating pain.
At 30 years old, unemployed, ​a failure at everything​ he had ever attempted, with a weak body, William returned home. He fell into a deep depression and planned to take his own life.
Before he committed suicide, he had one last thought.
He made an agreement with himself to try an experiment. He would spend one entire year believing that he was 100% responsible for everything that occurred in his life, no matter what. During this period, he would do everything in his power to change his circumstances, no matter the outcome. If at the end of one year of taking responsibility for everything in his life​ and working to improve it nothing in his life had actually improved in that time, then it will be apparent that he was truly powerless to the circumstances around him. And then, he thought, he would take his own life.

The young man’s name was William James, the father of American psychology and one of the most influential philosophers of the past 100 years. William James would later refer to his experiment as his “rebirth,” and would credit it with everything that he would later accomplish.

According to James, happiness is created as a result of our being active participants in the game of life. Instead of brooding on the suffering and evils of existence, we are to readjust our attitudes and act as if life does have an ultimate meaning, even though this can never be proved by the rational mind. As James writes, “Believe that life is worth living, and your very belief will help create the fact.”
There is no reason to believe that life has a meaning, but the happiest people are those who go on believing anyway, hoping for a better future. James would add however that it is not mere fantasizing about the future that produces a happy life; it is acting based on this fantasy.

James draws a contrast between two different kinds of people: the “Once Born” and the “Twice Born.” Once Born people are those who are biologically predisposed to happiness: they have a childlike acceptance of life as it is, and they refuse to be bothered by the issues going on in the world.

However, if you feel there is something inherently wrong with the universe, if you feel that something is terribly amiss with the way things are and must be rectified, then you are Twice-Born. They are the people who we normally refer to as “pessimists”.

But there is more to it: based on these definitions, one might think that Once Born people are happy while Twice Born people are unhappy. In fact James argues that some of the happiest people are actually Twice Born. How is this possible? Well, the Twice Born attitude towards life often leads to a “crisis” expressed by clinical (psychological) issues, often accompanied by a strong desire to make sense of things. This positive desire is incompatible with the underlying negative emotional state, producing a contradiction which finds resolution in a transcendence of the negative state into a new, profound sense of the love of life. James could have taken his own “crisis of meaning” event as an example, but instead he discusses Leo Tolstoy. James explains that the Russian novelist’s successful effort to restore himself to mental health led to more than a return to his original condition.

We can abstract four main ingredients for a happy life, according to James:

Happiness requires Choice: the world in itself is a neutral flux of “booming blooming confusion,” hence it is entirely up to us whether to view it as positive, negative, or as absent of all meaning.

Happiness requires Active Risk-taking: happiness is not produced merely by thinking or by resigning oneself to life’s circumstances, but rather by taking bold risks and acting on possibilities that come from the “heart’s center,” the Real Self within.

Happiness involves “As-if” thinking: while we cannot prove rationally that freewill exists or that life is meaningful, acting “as if” we are free or “as if” there is an ultimate meaning in life will produce a free and meaningful life.

Happiness often comes after a Crisis of Meaning: throughout history, the happiest people often record going through a deep depression caused by a sense of loss of meaning. These events should not be repudiated but welcomed since only through them is the “Twice-born” sense of renewal possible.

It’s completely counterintuitive, the idea that being responsible for all of the horrible misfortunes that happen to us could somehow liberate us from them, but it’s true. Our responsibility for ourselves unleashes a deeper fulfillment by allowing us to construe whatever we confront into a value that fulfills our needs.

A layoff at work grants us the opportunity to explore new career paths we had always daydreamed about. A ​terrible breakup​ gives us the chance to take an honest look at ourselves and how our behaviors affect our relationships with loved ones.
Negative experiences are part of life. The question is not whether or not we have them but what we do with them.
Responsibility allows us to leverage our pain for empowerment, to transmute our suffering into strength, and our loss into opportunity.