All philosophical traditions have attempted to distinguish a sense of emotional well-being that is lasting and “true” from one that is temporary and “false”—an experience that is enduring and independent of circumstance from one that is fleeting because it depends on circumstance.

There is not a “true” happiness and a “false” happiness. Only happiness and meaning. The key to happiness is to realize that it is not the same thing as meaning.  The key to meaning is to realize that it is to be found neither in the pursuit, nor in the denial, of happiness. Happiness speaks to our health, meaning to our hope. The former provides for the necessities of life, the latter a reason for living… Happiness is the consequence of properly loving ourselves. Meaning is the consequence of loving others as ourselves.

Because I did not understand the difference between meaning and happiness, I did not appreciate that life could be meaningful without being happy. I didn’t understand that meaning and happiness are occasionally opposed, such that the self-sacrifice that yields meaning may come at the cost of the very things on which happiness most depends. I erroneously assumed that if I were unhappy then my life lacked significance.

Happiness fades by design, precisely because it’s a means to an end, not an end in itself. We continually need to meet our psychological, emotional, and physical needs to remain healthy. If one meal were enough to provide lasting happiness, we would slowly starve to death afterward …

Consequently, there’s a limit to our happiness, which is defined by the amount required to satisfy a biological need. Exceed this amount, and the result isn’t more happiness but the discomfort and disease that follow from overindulgence. While some may be good, more isn’t necessarily better, and too much of a good thing can be a bad thing.

Happiness is true, even though it fades, and meaning is also true, despite the fact that it endures. Those experiences that define what it most means to be human are true not because they endure, they are true because they are meaningful.

Being human is not about being happy, not because happiness fades, but because the apex of the human experience is not happiness but meaning. Meaning endures not because it is true but because it is not dependent on circumstance. Happiness is transient not because it is false but precisely because it is dependent on circumstance.

Each emotional experience is true in its proper domain. What makes one fleeting and the other lasting is not truth but the fact that one belongs to the temporal and the other to the eternal.

The major dilemma in life arises when it is assumed that meaning is simply a greater degree of happiness, such that the more one indulges physiological needs, the more likely it is that life will be experienced as meaningful.