Op-Ed: What is True Happiness?

Goethe once confessed: “I lived a happy life, but I cannot remember a single happy week.” At first this statement startled me. It sounded contradictory, even absurd. How could a life be described as happy if not a single week was filled entirely with joy? And yet, the more I turned this thought over in my mind, the more I realized that Goethe was revealing something profound: happiness is not a permanent state, it is not a continuous possession to be held, like a coin tucked safely in one’s pocket. It is something that comes and goes—fragile, flickering, impossible to grasp for long.

This paradox has haunted humanity for centuries. We want happiness to be stable, enduring, uninterrupted, but our experience resists that fantasy. Joy slips away, moments of delight fade into memory, and what remains is often struggle, disappointment, or routine. Philosophers have tried to define it, poets to capture it, prophets to point the way, and yet the question remains unsettled.

And so I ask again, in my own time and with my own struggles: Is happiness a utopia? Is it nothing more than a dream—something we imagine but cannot touch—or are we simply searching in the wrong places, blind to the sparks that already exist in our lives?

This question feels especially urgent in our modern age. We live in a world saturated with promises of happiness. Every advertisement whispers that the right product, the right lifestyle, the right achievement will make us complete. Social media shows us carefully curated images of others who seem endlessly content, smiling in exotic places, eating perfect meals, living flawless lives. We are told, over and over, that happiness is just one step away—if only we buy, consume, achieve, perform.

And yet beneath all these promises lies a troubling reality. Rates of depression and anxiety climb. Loneliness spreads like an invisible epidemic. Many of us feel disconnected, not only from one another, but also from ourselves, from any deeper meaning that might anchor our lives. Surrounded by comforts, we feel estranged. Drowning in abundance, we sense an emptiness that no purchase can fill.

It is in this tension that Goethe’s words strike me with such force. Perhaps he understood what we resist: that happiness does not live in an endless series of satisfactions. It cannot be measured in weeks, months, or years without sadness. It is something different—something woven through struggle, through impermanence, through contrast.

When I reflect on my own life, I see the truth of this. I have passed through seasons of despair where joy felt like a foreign country, where life seemed drained of meaning. And yet, even in those times, sparks appeared: the smile of a child, the comfort of a kind word, the stillness of prayer. These moments did not erase the struggle, but they pierced it. They were like stars in a dark sky—tiny, but enough to remind me that light still exists.

From the perspective of Aba Al-Sadiq’s teachings, this paradox is not only expected but essential. He reminds us that happiness cannot be built on the fragile foundation of ego. The ego always wants more: more comfort, more power, more recognition. But this endless hunger never satisfies. True joy, he teaches, is found not in domination but in surrender, not in accumulation but in giving, not in isolation but in solidarity. Happiness is not an escape from life’s troubles—it is discovered precisely in the way we walk through them.

This essay is my attempt to walk that road on paper. I do not pretend to offer a final answer, for happiness cannot be pinned down by definition. Instead, I want to explore its many faces: the fleeting sparks that appear in moments of struggle, the illusions that blind us, the wisdom of traditions that point us back to what matters. Along the way, I will listen to Goethe and Buddha, to modern critiques of consumer culture, to the African philosophy of Ubuntu, and above all, to the voice of Aba Al-Sadiq, whose teachings shape the community I live in—a community that has made Ubuntu not just an idea, but a way of life.

Perhaps, if we follow these threads together, we will find that happiness is not a utopia after all. It is not unreachable. It is close, but fragile; simple, but demanding. And perhaps, in rediscovering it, we may also rediscover ourselves.

The Fleeting Spark of Joy

When Goethe confessed that he remembered no happy week, he was not denying joy. Rather, he was pointing us toward its true nature. Happiness, he seemed to say, is not an uninterrupted melody. It is the sudden notes that appear between silences, the sparks that shine only against the backdrop of darkness. We deceive ourselves when we imagine a “happy life” as one long stretch of unbroken pleasure. In truth, happiness is intermittent, fragile, and inseparable from struggle.

This is a truth that different traditions have echoed for centuries. Buddha taught that life is suffering—that impermanence and loss are woven into the fabric of our existence. But he also taught that joy can be found within this very reality, not beyond it. Happiness, in his words, is not a prize at the end of the path but the path itself. It lies in walking with awareness, in finding meaning in each step, even when the road is difficult.

I once glimpsed this truth in a moment that might seem trivial, yet has never left me. One evening, preparing to drive somewhere, I opened the car door for my young son. He wanted to climb into his seat by himself. Out of instinct, I lifted him up and placed him there. To my surprise, he burst into tears, pointing insistently back to the ground. Confused, I set him down again. This time he struggled—pulling himself up, clambering over the seat, inch by inch—until at last he sat down triumphantly, smiling with radiant joy.

In that instant I understood: his happiness was not in sitting down comfortably, but in reaching it through his own effort. The joy was in the process, not the result. My son’s tears and smiles embodied what Buddha had said long ago: joy arises not from avoiding struggle, but from embracing it.

And yet, our modern world constantly teaches us the opposite. We are told that happiness is something we can purchase. Advertising whispers: “Buy this, and you will be fulfilled. Achieve this, and you will be complete.” We scroll through social media and see carefully curated snapshots of others who seem endlessly happy, and we compare our messy, unfinished lives to their polished illusions. We are trained to measure joy in possessions, in appearances, in achievements.

This is not a new idea. The ancient philosopher Aristippus, one of the earliest hedonists, argued that the purpose of life was pleasure, and that the wise person should maximize it. But what Aristippus saw as philosophy, our modern economic system has turned into exploitation. Consumer culture has taken the idea of multiplying pleasures and weaponized it. It urges us not to seek genuine contentment, but to chase endless satisfactions that never last. Each desire fulfilled is replaced by another, each purchase followed by a new craving. The system whispers: “Don’t question, just enjoy what is offered to you.” And in doing so, it reduces us to slaves of desire.

Abraham Maslow once tried to organize human needs into a pyramid. At the bottom were the basics: food, water, rest. Above that, safety. Then love and belonging, then esteem, and finally self-actualization—the fulfillment of one’s potential. The idea was that once the lower needs are met, we can climb to higher levels, eventually reaching deep satisfaction. But life is rarely so neat. We are not all born at the same place on the pyramid. For some, even food and safety are fragile; for others, abundance still leaves an emptiness at the top.

Maslow’s model is useful, but incomplete. It assumes that happiness is a ladder we can climb step by step. But what if true joy does not lie at the top of a pyramid, but within the act of climbing itself? What if happiness is not the arrival, but the journey?

This is where the teachings of Aba Al-Sadiq bring clarity. He warns us that the ego is insatiable. It will always want more—more wealth, more recognition, more power. It whispers that happiness lies in satisfying these cravings, but in truth, this endless hunger only deepens our emptiness. No possession, no title, no conquest can silence the ego’s demands.

True joy, Aba Al-Sadiq teaches, is found in overcoming the ego, not serving it. It is not discovered in the multiplication of pleasures, but in their transcendence. It appears when we surrender the illusion of control, when we choose to give rather than to take, when we recognize that happiness is not about the self alone, but about the bonds that connect us to others and to God.

Goethe’s paradox, Buddha’s teaching, my son’s struggle, Maslow’s pyramid, the failures of consumer culture—all point to the same conclusion: happiness is not a possession. It is not a utopia of endless delight. It is a fleeting spark that arises in the struggle, in the process, in the overcoming of the self.

The Role of Art

Happiness also reveals itself in art. Poetry, music, painting—these do not erase suffering, but they give it form. They turn chaos into expression, and in doing so, they allow us to breathe. When Goethe himself struggled with despair, he wrote poems that carried the weight of his contradictions. When Beethoven, almost deaf, composed his Ninth Symphony, he poured both pain and joy into music that still lifts millions of souls. When Imam Ali wrote of the soul’s longing, he revealed that even sorrow in this world can be transformed into beauty.

Art teaches us that happiness does not mean the absence of sadness. It means the possibility of holding them together, of allowing pain and delight to coexist in one canvas, one melody, one line of poetry. Art does not give us utopia. It gives us resonance: the echo of our struggle, the flicker of our joy, the assurance that we are not alone.

Ubuntu and Shared Humanity

There is a story often told about an anthropologist who wanted to play a game with children in an African tribe. He placed a basket of fruit under a tree and told them: “Whoever runs fastest will win it all.” He expected them to compete, to race, to push one another aside in pursuit of the prize. But instead, the children joined hands, ran together, and reached the tree side by side. When he asked them why, they answered with disarming simplicity: “How can one of us be happy if the others are not?”

That response holds the essence of Ubuntu: “I am because we are.” It is a philosophy of interdependence, a vision of life in which my joy is inseparable from yours. Against the dominant culture of competition and isolation, Ubuntu offers a radical reminder: happiness cannot be hoarded. It grows only when it is shared.

I have not only read about Ubuntu, I have seen it alive. In the community I belong to, guided by the teachings of Aba Al-Sadiq, I have witnessed what it means to live this principle. We are not bound by blood alone but by a shared commitment to one another’s well-being. When one of us suffers, all feel the weight. When one rejoices, the joy is multiplied. It is a perfect community—not because we are flawless, but because it is built as a family, grounded in the conviction that happiness is collective, not individual. In a world that tells us to live as isolated selves, this way of life feels like breathing fresh air.

Even in smaller circles, the same truth applies. A family is in many ways a miniature Ubuntu. When a child smiles, parents feel joy. When a parent suffers, the whole household feels the heaviness. Happiness in a family is never isolated—it spreads, it circulates. The smallest unit of society already carries the blueprint of what humanity as a whole is meant to be. The tragedy is that as we grow older, we often forget this. We exchange solidarity for ambition, replace the warmth of belonging with the cold pursuit of success.

Religious traditions, at their best, have always reminded us of this truth. The mosque that feeds the hungry with pastries and sherbet, the church that offers bread and wine, the synagogue that warms the poor with soup in winter. These are not just rituals of faith. They are expressions of Ubuntu, of shared humanity, of the recognition that the soul is nourished not by isolation but by communion. Sadly, history also shows how religion has been twisted—used as a tool of division, a weapon of power, a justification for exploitation. The tragedy lies not in religion itself, but in our failure to live by its true spirit: to love, to give, and to share.

Aba Al-Sadiq’s voice cuts through this distortion. He reminds us that our greatest struggle is not with external enemies but with the ego within. The ego whispers: “Seek happiness for yourself. Hoard it. Compete. Dominate.” But true joy, he teaches, comes only in overcoming the ego. The path of faith is not about feeding desire, but about freeing ourselves from its chains. And the way we do this is through service—through giving to others, through lifting our brothers and sisters, through remembering that happiness is a trust we hold in common.

This is why Ubuntu and Aba Al-Sadiq speak with one voice. Ubuntu shows us that our lives are interwoven: I am because we are. Aba Al-Sadiq shows us that the ego, left unchecked, blinds us to this truth and traps us in isolation. Together, they invite us into a new way of living, one that feels both ancient and urgently needed: to see my joy as bound to yours, my freedom as tied to your freedom, my happiness as incomplete without yours.

In this light, happiness is no longer a utopia. It is not some unreachable dream for a perfect society. It is fragile, yes. It is demanding, yes. But it is real. It appears wherever people choose to live as we instead of I. And I am grateful to live in a community where this choice is made daily, sincerely—a community where Ubuntu is not an idea in a book, but a way of life

Religion and the Hunger of the Soul

Every human being carries a hunger that bread alone cannot satisfy. We may feed our bodies, clothe ourselves, even surround our lives with comforts, and yet still feel an emptiness gnawing inside. It is the hunger of the soul—the longing for meaning, for belonging, for connection beyond the narrow circle of the self.

Religions, in their essence, have always sought to answer this hunger. Their rituals of food and drink are not only symbols of faith, but reminders that joy and nourishment must be shared. I think of the stories where people find themselves in places of worship, not only to pray, but to be fed. What do these stories tell us? That the true essence of religion is not to divide, but to feed. Not to claim ownership of joy, but to share it. In the mosque, the church, the synagogue, the same hunger was met with the same answer: generosity. This is religion at its best—Ubuntu embodied, the recognition that my neighbor’s hunger is also mine.

And yet, how often has this essence been lost? Too often, religion has been twisted into an instrument of division. Instead of uniting us around our shared hunger, it has been used to separate, to provoke, to divide people into classes and tribes. Throughout history, faith has been hijacked by egos that sought power, wealth, and control, dressing their ambitions in the language of the sacred. The result has been bloodshed, hatred, and estrangement.

But if we strip away the distortions, what remains is simple and radiant: religion as nourishment. It is the same truth that Ubuntu whispers: I am because we are. When I feed another, I feed myself. When I lift another, I lift myself.

Aba Al-Sadiq reminds us that this hunger of the soul is also where our greatest struggle lies. For the ego does not want to feed others; it wants to be fed first. It resists the truth that joy is collective. It craves ownership of happiness, turning even faith into a weapon for domination. The task of the believer, then, is to fight the inner jihad—the battle against the ego that corrupts love into power, service into exploitation.

When I look at the community I live in, I see how this hunger is answered not by possessions but by solidarity. We are not bound by tribe or nation, but by the conviction that joy belongs to all or to none. When one member struggles, the others step in. When one rejoices, all rejoice. This is what religion was always meant to be: a table set not for one, but for all.

The hunger of the soul will never be satisfied by bread alone, nor by possessions, nor by power. It is satisfied only when we live in a way that reflects our deepest truth: that we belong to one another. This is the heart of true religion, the heart of Aba Al-Sadiq’s teaching.

And it is here that happiness ceases to be an illusion. For even in hardship, even in hunger, even in struggle, when we share our lives with one another, we taste something of joy. Not the shallow pleasure of consumption, but the deep satisfaction of knowing: I am because we are.

Violence and Estrangement

If happiness is fragile, then violence is its greatest enemy. Nothing destroys the possibility of joy faster than cruelty—whether it comes from nations, systems, or individuals. And yet violence, in all its forms, continues to stain human history. Wars erupt. Oppression flourishes. Families are shattered. Why?

The answer is not simple, but one thread runs through it all: injustice. People whose dignity is stolen, whose resources are exploited, whose voices are silenced, often turn to violence to reclaim what was taken. As one thinker wrote, “Those who remain poor so that others may grow rich are eventually forced into violence.” Sometimes it is the oppressed themselves who lash out; sometimes it is the ignorant, manipulated by those who benefit from violence. In both cases, the cycle is the same: suffering breeds hatred, hatred breeds violence, and violence breeds more suffering.

We see this in the world today. Entire populations flee their homes not in search of happiness but simply to escape death. Children grow up amid war, learning that the world is a place of fear. Even those of us in safer lands are not untouched—we feel the unease, the heaviness, the estrangement that comes when injustice poisons the earth.

But violence does not only come from outside. It begins within. Aba Al-Sadiq reminds us that the greatest battlefield is the heart. Inside each of us lives an ego that craves domination. It whispers: “Rule, or be ruled. Take, or be taken. Better to be master than slave.” This is the seed of violence. Outward wars are only the reflection of inward wars we have failed to fight.

Even animals compete for dominance, but humans add something else: awareness of death. We alone know that our lives will end, and this knowledge breeds fear. To silence that fear, many grasp for power, seeking immortality in control. History is filled with kings and emperors who shed rivers of blood chasing after eternal glory—or even literal immortality, searching for the “water of life.” Their violence was fueled not only by greed but by terror: the terror of their own mortality.

Aba Al-Sadiq unmasks this illusion. The ego promises security through domination, but delivers only destruction. The real enemy is not my neighbor, not another nation, not even the system—it is the monster inside me. As he teaches, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against arrogance, greed, and fear that dwell in the human heart. Until we fight this jihad al-nafs, the inner battle, violence will continue to poison our lives.

And yet, even here, there is hope. For just as violence multiplies suffering, mercy multiplies joy. When we resist the urge to dominate, when we forgive, when we share, we break the cycle. The ego is diminished, and happiness—fragile, fleeting, but real—becomes possible again.

I have seen glimpses of this in my own community. People wounded by past violence, by betrayal, by injustice, find healing not in revenge but in belonging. They discover that forgiveness is not weakness but strength, that sharing one’s burden can turn sorrow into solidarity. These moments do not erase the reality of violence, but they reveal a different possibility: that joy can grow even from the soil of suffering, if we choose mercy over hate.

Violence will always tempt us. The system of the world will continue to provoke it, feeding on division and fear. But if we take Aba Al-Sadiq’s teaching seriously, if we recognize that the battlefield is first within, then perhaps we can begin to break free. Happiness is not possible in a world ruled by violence, but it is possible in a heart that has overcome it. And when enough hearts are freed, the world itself can begin to heal.

The True Secret: Reflecting What We Seek 

People say: if you imagine enough, if you desire strongly, the world will give you what you want. They call it the law of attraction. They made books and films about it, they sold millions of copies, they promised a new world. And yet, here we are. The rich grow richer, the poor remain poor, wars multiply, the earth burns. If desire alone could save us, we would already live in paradise. But we do not.

Aba Al-Sadiq taught a different secret. And it was not about imagining, it was about becoming. He said: “You should be however you want God to be with you.” Do you want mercy? Show mercy. Do you want forgiveness? Forgive. Do you want generosity? Give. The world is a mirror. Whatever you pour out will come back to you.

And he lived this secret. He would walk the streets of Cairo with little more than a handful of coins, and when someone asked, he gave. Sometimes a portion, sometimes all of it. Not because he had plenty, but because he saw every request as God knocking at his door. And he discovered something strange: the more he gave, the more life gave back to him. Even the smallest things—he once said if he only thought of chocolate, somehow someone would appear with chocolate. As if the universe itself was eager to mirror his heart.

But money and chocolate are only shadows of the deeper truth. The real treasure was his vow never to go to sleep with bitterness in his heart. Every night, he forgave. Friends, enemies, even those who hurt him most—he forgave them all. He said even if the prophecy of his death by the hands of others was fulfilled, his forgiveness would reach his killer. Imagine that. To forgive the hand that ends your life. Not out of weakness, not out of naivety, but out of trust. Trust that God’s mercy is stronger than His wrath. Trust that no soul should remain chained in hatred.

And here the secret shines clear: happiness is not something you chase. Not something you seize. It is something that returns to you when you give it away. It is a mirror. The joy you offer is the joy reflected back. The mercy you show is the mercy you will meet. The forgiveness you extend is the forgiveness you will receive.

This is the true secret. Not the fantasies of attraction, not the false promises of consumption. But this simple law of reflection: become what you long for, and it will not only visit you, it will embrace you.

A Wider Horizon: Humanity and the Pale Blue Dot

If happiness is not a solitary possession but a shared condition, then the truest test of this truth is our planet itself. The earth is the stage on which all human joys and sorrows unfold. And yet, when we look honestly at the state of the world, the question presses on us with greater weight: How can one of us be happy while so many suffer?

Consider the refugee who leaves everything behind, not in search of pleasure but simply for safety. Consider the mother who risks her life to cross a sea, carrying her child away from bombs and hunger. For these millions, happiness is not even a question. Their priority is survival. To speak of joy in such a world feels almost cruel, unless we broaden our understanding of happiness beyond the self.

The economic order we live in promises prosperity but delivers inequality. The strong consume the resources of the weak, using the language of progress while stealing not only wealth but also dignity. The earth itself groans under the weight of this exploitation. Forests burn, oceans rise, species vanish. Climate change is not only an environmental crisis but a moral one. For in destroying the planet, we are robbing future generations of their chance at joy.

And yet, how quickly we forget. We see suffering on the news and feel a pang of sorrow, but then scroll on. The system trains us to move past the pain of others, to retreat into the isolation of our own lives. Slowly, without realizing it, we become estranged—not only from our neighbours but from humanity itself.

Carl Sagan once invited us to step back and look at our world from a cosmic distance. From the edge of the solar system, the Earth appears as nothing more than a “pale blue dot,” a fragile speck of dust suspended in a sunbeam. On that tiny stage, every war has been fought, every empire has risen and fallen, every saint and sinner has lived and died. Seen from that vantage point, all our divisions—borders, tribes, nations, even religions—become absurd. The rivers of blood spilled by generals to rule one corner of this pixel seem like madness. Our illusions of grandeur dissolve. What remains is humility.

When I reflect on that image, I hear the voice of the Turkish poet Tevfik Fikret: “My homeland is the whole earth, my nation is humanity.” These are not only poetic words; they are a moral demand. They call us to abandon the narrowness of tribalism and to embrace our shared destiny. If the earth is our only home, then to wound one part of humanity is to wound the whole. To uplift one life is to uplift us all.

Aba Al-Sadiq’s teachings echo this cosmic vision. He calls us to overcome the illusions of ego, greed, and domination, and to recognize that our fate is bound together. He warns that happiness built on exploitation is a mirage, that joy hoarded by a few while others suffer is false. True happiness, he teaches, is collective. It grows where justice is practiced, where mercy is extended, where humanity is seen as one body.

Perhaps this is why so many traditions, ancient and modern, imagine a future of collective consciousness. The idea that one day humanity might awaken, might see itself as a single organism, might return to its original essence of harmony. Science even hints that our DNA is evolving, opening new doors of awareness. Whether or not this future comes, the truth remains: we are already bound together, invisibly yet inescapably.

And so we return to our question: Is happiness a utopia? If we continue to live as if we were isolated, yes—it will always elude us. But if we embrace the fragility of our pale blue dot, if we remember that our homeland is the earth and our nation is humanity, then happiness becomes something else. It is not a dream for a distant future but a responsibility for the present. It is not endless, not perfect, but real—whenever we choose mercy over domination, solidarity over isolation, humility over ego.

Seen from the stars, our struggles are small. But from within them, the choice we make each day—to harm or to heal, to take or to give—carries infinite weight. For in those choices, the fragile possibility of happiness is born.

Conclusion: The Path, Not the Utopia

Goethe’s words have followed us through this journey: “I lived a happy life, but I cannot remember a single happy week.” At first, they sounded absurd. Now they sound like wisdom. Happiness is not the absence of sadness, not an endless festival of joy. It is something more fragile, more fleeting, yet more profound: the sparks that appear in struggle, the moments of light in the midst of darkness.

We have seen this truth reflected in many voices. Buddha taught that happiness lies not at the end of the path but in walking it with awareness. Ubuntu reminds us that joy cannot be hoarded, that I am because we are. Religion, at its best, nourishes our souls by feeding not only the body but also our shared humanity. Aba Al-Sadiq calls us to fight the monsters within, to overcome the ego that seeks domination, and to discover joy in service, humility, and solidarity. Carl Sagan and Tevfik Fikret lift our eyes to the wider horizon: a fragile blue dot, a homeland that is the whole earth, a nation that is humanity.

So, is happiness a utopia? If by happiness we mean endless pleasure, perfect security, freedom from all struggle—then yes, it is a dream we will never touch. But if by happiness we mean the sparks that light our way—the smile of a child, the embrace of community, the courage to forgive, the wonder of a starlit sky—then it is not a utopia at all. It is here. Fragile, fleeting, demanding, but real.

The challenge is not to build a perfect world without sorrow. The challenge is to learn how to live in such a way that joy becomes possible even amid imperfection. To choose mercy over violence, solidarity over isolation, humility over ego. To remember, with Ubuntu, that my joy is bound to yours, and with Aba Al-Sadiq, that true happiness begins not in feeding the self but in transcending it.

Perhaps, then, Goethe’s paradox is the answer itself. We may never know a week of pure happiness. But we may still live a happy life—one made of sparks gathered along the way. A life in which, even amid darkness, the light has not gone out.

And perhaps there is one more spark we should not overlook: humor. Sometimes the greatest joy is the ability to laugh at our own fragility. To smile at the absurdity of life, to find lightness even in heaviness, is itself an act of resistance against despair. In laughter, sorrow does not disappear, but it loosens its grip. To laugh together is to confess that none of us has mastered life, and yet we can still share its burden with a smile.

In this way, humor becomes a form of happiness uniquely human. It does not deny the tragedy of existence; it answers it with playfulness, with resilience, with a reminder that joy can erupt even in the cracks of suffering.