One summer Sunday afternoon our daughter, her husband, and three small children were driving to their Dallas, Texas area home from church, about a 20-minute drive. Summers in Dallas are hot and humid, and even going from an air-conditioned building to an air-conditioned car can be stifling. It hadn't been a great day at church with three preschoolers who needed naps. Baby Mandi and toddler Ben were crying very loudly. While their car was stopped at a stoplight by a strip mall, four-year-old Brinley looked over at the people clad in their summer clothes getting shaved ice at a stand in the parking lot. She asked her parents, "How come those people don't have to go to church like we do?" Her mother replied, "Because they're not happy like we are!"

Some people might look at those who were getting the shaved ice—or whatever other activities and entertainments chosen instead of church attendance and honoring the Sabbath--- as the really happy ones. And they'd be quite doubtful that this young family enduring a three-hour church experience along with the commute—as well as the many other commitments, requirements, and time involvement of faithful Latter-day Saints---could truly be happy.

Seeking happiness is a universal human experience. The Prophet Joseph Smith said, "Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it." 1 The paths that lead to happiness have been sought, tried, rejected, encouraged, and lauded by people in every age and every place.

"What Makes Us Happy?" is the title of an article in the June Atlantic Monthly. Author Joshua Wolf Shenk examines the 72-year longitudinal study conducted at Harvard, in which researchers followed 268 men who had started college in the 1930s. The study followed the men through their educational years, careers, war experiences, marriages and families, illness, and old age. Harvard's study is the longest-lasting and most-in depth of its kind, and Shenk is the first journalist allowed access to the files. George Vaillant, who took over the study in 1967, devoted his career to this examination of what has made these men happy or unhappy. Throughout the years, the men were examined physically, given extensive questionnaires, and interviewed personally.

Vaillant, a psychiatrist, "identified seven major factors that predict healthy aging, both physically and psychologically." 2 They are: employing mature adaptations, education, stable marriage, not smoking, not abusing alcohol, some exercise, and healthy weight. "Of the 106 Harvard men who had five or six of these factors in their favor at age 50, half ended up at 80 as what Vaillant called 'happy-well' and only 7.5 percent as 'sad-sick.' Meanwhile, of the men who had three or fewer of the health factors at age 50, none ended up 'happy-well' at 80." Vaillant found that alcoholism was the single most negative factor in these men's lives. When interviewed last year about what he had learned from the subjects of this study–to which he had devoted 40 years, he replied, "That the only thing that really matters in life are your relationships to other people." 3

Albert Schweitze, perhaps, stated how to achieve happiness more simply: "I do not know what your destiny will be, but this I do know: The only ones among you who will be truly happy are those who will have sought and found a way to serve."

We recognize fundamental truths in what both Vaillant and Schweitzer conclude about finding happiness through stable family life and relationships with others, abstaining from smoking and drinking, and giving service. However, Church members have been given even better guidelines, or commandments, in the scriptures and through living prophets as how to be happy. The Proclamation on the Family, for example, states: "Happiness in family life is most likely to be achieved when founded upon the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and whole recreational activities."

The Word of Wisdom, as another example, promises blessings of health, wisdom, and hidden treasures: "And all saints who remember to keep and do these sayings, walking in obedience to the commandments shall receive health in their navel and marrow to their bones.

"And shall find wisdom and great treasures of knowledge, even hidden treasures;

"And shall run and not be weary, and shall walk and not faint."

Scripture also instructs as to what happiness is not: "Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10). Volumes could be written on that concept alone. We see examples publicized in the media every day of individuals mistakenly thinking happiness could be found through immorality, drugs, alcohol, greed, or power.

Latter-day Saints know that true happiness not only in this life but also in the life-to-come can be gained only by obeying God's commandments: 'And moreover, I would desire that ye should consider on the blessed and happy state of those that keep the commandments of God. For behold, they are blessed in all things, both temporal and spiritual; and if they hold out faithful to the end they are received into heaven, that thereby they may dwell with God in a state of never-ending happiness. O remember, remember that these things are true; for the Lord God hath spoken it. (Mosiah 2:41).