The path to happiness - Robert Kennedy Jr

"Money and fame are wormwood and bile" RFK Jr

Sometimes in life one hears something so well expressed that one has to write it down.  These thoughts came during a political interview with Harvard educated Robet Kennedy Jr - but they are not political.  He speaks like this because he has suffered greatly and come through all kinds of trials, including the violent and untimely deaths of loved ones and drug addiction, and attributes that to discovering a living faith in God.  

At 31 minutes into this interview, he explains what his father taught him but he puts it into his own memorable words. He says:

• The path to happiness and self-esteem is through service to others
• Life is not about making a pile of stuff for yourself and whoever dies with the biggest pile 'wins'
• We are here to build something
• The most important thing we build is character
• The existentialists were the heirs of the Stoics, expressed in Camus's book The Myth of Sisyphus. Here was an iconic hero, doomed due to doing something good for humanity to push a boulder up a hill which rolls down again every night.  He was a happy man for the Stoics, engaged in a hopeless task in an absurd (to them) universe doing his duty, building character.
• The only thing that we build that is durable and meaningful is character
• Money can be taken away and fame can die but character cannot be taken away
• Character endures after we die (i.e. into eternity)

My thoughts are: this is theological.  We are all being tested and we all develop through trials. We are supposed to come through trials through faith and find our true selves via the test of faith.   "What does not kill you makes you strong".  

Ultimately, the result is the 'gold' of a tested character.  God even allows acute suffering to achieve this one, incomparable end.  

One can add to this the thought of St Paul "We rejoice in our sufferings knowing that suffering produces perseverance and perseverance produces character and character hope and\ hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us."  Romans 5. 3-5