During a time of unexpected financial hardship, one of the affluent Chasidim of R. Schneur Zalman of Liadi, known as the Alter Rebbe, approached him seeking blessings and insight into how to turn his life around.

Until very recently, the man explained, he had been fortunate in business, but his affairs had taken a downward turn, and he found himself in debt and unable to meet his many financial obligations.

The Alter Rebbe listened and then with one sentence changed the trajectory of this man’s life and spiritual journey, saying, “Until now, you have spoken about what you need. But you have not given thought to what you are needed for.”1

How easy it is for each of us to confuse what we want from life with the purpose of life itself. Now, more than ever, in an age of unprecedented abundance, it is widely believed that the ideal life is dependent upon achieving the highest levels of happiness, pleasure, and personal satisfaction.

But the desperate pursuit of happiness rarely bears the fruit we hope it will. Rather than looking for fulfillment in pursuit of what we think we need, we are far more likely to find true satisfaction and joy by focusing on our Divinely imparted purpose—that is, what our Creator needs of us.

Here we find one of the great, revolutionary ideas inherent to Judaism. G‑d created the world because He needs you. Reread the last sentence. Your Creator—G‑d Himself, eternal, omnipotent, and without limitation—needs you. Not because He is inadequate or lacking anything. G‑d is unlimited and complete by His very nature. Rather, metaphorically speaking, He chose to make Himself “vulnerable” for the sake of experiencing love and the singular, infinite joy of being chosen in return. Put simply, G‑d doesn’t love you because He needs you. He needs you because He loves you. Not for lack but for love. This yearning manifested in the creation of all things, so you could be, so you could reach for G‑d by fulfilling your sacred purpose.

This was the clarifying message offered by the Rebbe to a struggling student who asked how he might find his mission in life:

“The Mishnah states that man was created in order to serve his Creator.”2

Here, and in countless other exchanges with individuals seeking a path toward fulfillment, the Rebbe offered this text and teaching as the very mission statement—in fact, the very raison d’être—of humankind. This spiritual axiom defines service rather than happiness as the beating heart of our existence, and it serves as a clarion call to everyone who seeks true happiness.

More to Life

The consequences of bypassing our Divine purpose in pursuit of self-focused happiness is illustrated by a written exchange between the Rebbe and a student who reached out in a state of protracted depression. The student wrote to the Rebbe, “I would like the Rebbe’s help. I wake up each day sad and apprehensive. I can’t concentrate. I find it hard to pray. I keep the commandments, but I find no spiritual satisfaction. I go to the synagogue, but I feel alone. I begin to wonder what life is about. I need help.”

The Rebbe sent an incisive response that clarified the source of the student’s unhappiness without using a single word. He simply took his pen, circled the first word of every sentence in the letter, and sent it back. When the student opened the letter and saw the Rebbe’s markings, he understood.

The Rebbe had diagnosed the perspectival root of his malaise and set him on the path to recovery by circling every instance of the word “I.”3

With delightful clarity and style, the Rebbe highlights the way in which many of us become trapped in the self-centered pursuit of experiences and accolades that we think will satisfy our ever-molting individual wants and needs, which typically leaves little room in the picture for serving our Divine purpose. At best, such an approach to life involves G‑d and others as facilitators or contributors to our personal search for satisfaction and fulfillment. Any happiness found in this mad dash rarely satisfies for long, requiring us to seek ever-newer, bigger, and better experiences as the joy we gather and grasp for rapidly evaporates. In most cases, no matter how profound our so-called peak experiences, the happiness extracted leaves us paradoxically empty and hungry for more. In this way, over time, our appetites begin to consume us.

Indeed, according to modern researchers, the single-minded pursuit of happiness is leaving people less happy, and in many cases downright miserable. In fact, as observed in an Atlantic article titled, “There’s More to Life Than Being Happy,” author Emily Esfahani Smith points out that researchers and health experts are beginning to caution against the pursuit of happiness as an end unto itself.4

Their caution emerges from persistent findings that a “meaningful” life and a “happy” life overlap in certain ways, but they are ultimately very different and derive from very different approaches to living. Most importantly, the pursuit of a happy life, researchers find increasingly, is predicated on being a “taker,” while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a “giver.”

The article goes on to quote Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of Some Key Differences Between a Happy Life and a Meaningful Life, a study published in The Journal of Positive Psychology. There she observes, “Happy people get joy from receiving benefits from others, while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others.”5

Paradoxically, it seems that it’s precisely when we don’t go looking for happiness and are willing to set it aside for the sake of others that we find it unexpectedly.

This truth is reflected more and more in the work of modern social scientists, who suggest that unlike the fleeting and fickle pleasures of a more self-centered approach to life, giving and service generate a particular quality of happiness that is both meaningful and long lasting.6 Indeed, according to current research, the joy that you feel when you do a good deed has a tangible impact on your body. In much the same way that exercise releases endorphins into your brain that make you feel good naturally, acts of charity generate what scientists call the “helpers’ high.”7

In other words, human beings are hardwired to derive true happiness from service.

This was recently confirmed as part of a study that surveyed data from across one hundred thirty-six countries. According to Elizabeth Dunn, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia and member of the research team, “In contrast to traditional economic thought—which places self-interest as the guiding principle of human motivation—[our] findings suggest that the reward experienced from helping others may be deeply ingrained in human nature, emerging in diverse cultural and economic contexts.”8

These conclusions echo what Jewish wisdom has been telling us for centuries—namely, that true happiness emerges from following our innate desire to serve and do good in the world rather than from the pursuit of pure self-satisfaction.

In the words of the Rebbe, written in the fall of 1961:

“There can be two approaches to life:

(a) To consider [one’s aim in life] as a matter of pleasure—in which case every effort should be made toward getting the most [pleasure] out of life…

(b) To consider life as a challenge…to help make a better world to live in, especially since the society we live in is far from perfection. In this case, every effort must be made toward this end, even if it means the sacrifice of certain personal pleasures, and even if it requires a great deal of continuous physical and mental exertion. But, as a matter of fact, it is this latter approach that offers the maximum pleasure—real pleasure and gratification.”9

The Seeds of True Happiness

The inborn inclination to offer oneself in the service of something beyond the self is instilled in every one of us. According to the Kabbalists,10 one of the reasons G‑d created the world was to express loving-kindness. As the Sages teach, “Teva Hatov l’heitiv—it is in the nature of He Who is good to do good.” Accordingly, our unique propensity for giving is a natural reflection of the Divine image in which we were created. In this way, our commitment to a life of service becomes the only true route to sustainable well-being and happiness.

As pioneering Austrian psychologist and neurologist Dr. Viktor Frankl so potently put it, “Happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself…”11

This radical realization, in turn, becomes a sacred antidote to the creeping, debilitating notion that tells you that happiness is to be found in the pursuit of personal pleasure above all, and it invites you to rise up and claim the path to happiness that G‑d made just for you.

As we learned previously, there are tasks built into your life, things only you can do because you are precisely who and what you are, living in your time, forged by your experiences, and aligned with circumstances that are built into the story of your Divine purpose. G‑d needs you to answer the call to service He created you to fulfill—a kindness to deliver, charity to give, peace to sew, pain to heal, wrongs to right, or lives to mend. It is precisely in pursuit of this personalized holy purpose that meaning, and therefore happiness, is truly found.

As the Rebbe reminds us: It is not what you think you need but what you are needed for that brings true happiness.