April 22, 2025
A while back, I was reading a book by Hannah Arendt for a course that I’m doing and she had a comment on happiness that really wormed its way into my brain. It’s in a section she is writing on labour, a realm of human action that she describes as being distinct from work and related to the cyclical nature of our survival. She writes,
“There is no lasting happiness outside the prescribed cycle of painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration, and whatever throws this cycle out of balance — poverty and misery where exhaustion is followed by wretchedness instead of regeneration, or great riches and an entirely effortless life where boredom takes the place of exhaustion and where the mills of necessity, of consumption and digestion, grind an impotent human body mercilessly and barrenly to death — ruins the elemental happiness that comes from being alive.”
Read it a few times.
Arendt describes real, lasting happiness as being rooted in this cyclical aspect of labour; a pattern she refers to as painful exhaustion and then pleasurable regeneration. At first read, I had a hard time with that. How does exhaustion have anything to do with happiness? The pleasurable part of it made sense to me, but not pain. However, the more I (re)read and reflected, I think I started to get it. She’s talking about a fundamental balance in human behaviour. Look at how she describes the things that throw that cycle off: poverty and misery on one side and great riches and effortlessness on the other. Arendt suggests we need the balance of both to feel truly alive.
I had a prof who used to say ‘you can’t understand what it means to feast unless you understand what it means to fast.’
What’s fascinating to me is the relationship between happiness and sustainability. As capitalism has promised us a better life through the endless pursuit of more, our planet has struggled to keep up with our consumption rates. What’s even worse is that current studies suggest that beyond the meeting of essential needs there is no actual correlation between increased income and a country’s wellbeing rising together. The point is, current research is confirming what the wisest amongst us have been saying throughout human history: that the satisfaction of our desires is not the way to lasting happiness.
The world itself is dependant on that same cycle of exhaustion and regeneration. Resources are not infinite and need time to replenish. Capitalism’s insistence that there is always more to be taken has stripped the earth of what it has left to give, breaking the balance of the cycle, and threatening our very survival.
Are we happy yet?
There is a way forward for us. Arendt’s definition of happiness echoes the very patterns needed for a sustainable future. It’s a cycle that invites us to resist the myth of endless growth and embrace the wisdom of limitations and moderation, patterns that are found all over the natural world. It’s a path connected to the core experience of simply being alive on this planet: painful exhaustion and pleasurable regeneration.
I believe in the possibility of change rippling out as people show others a different way. As I once heard in a podcast, “everything large is made up of small parts.” We can affect the big picture by creating new patterns in the smaller areas within our reach. Maybe by changing the way we think about and pursue happiness in our own lives, our families, our friend groups and neighbours, our workplaces, schools, and communities, we might begin to challenge the hold that capitalism has on our culture.