There is a problem with our pursuit of the next great experience, our attempts to feed our insatiable appetite for significance. Like excellence and action, happiness needs a worthy object. The pursuit of happiness as an end in itself is “vanity,” as we learn from the book of Ecclesiastes. Philosophers call it the “hedonist paradox”: the irony that the pursuit of pleasure actually chases it away. “Happiness is like a cat,” writes William Bennett. “If you try to coax it or call it, it will avoid you; it will never come. But if you pay no attention to it and go about your business, you’ll find it rubbing against your legs and jumping into your lap.”23 Happiness is something that happens when you’re looking for someone or something other than happiness. You can’t find meaning, fulfillment, or purpose by looking for it, but only by discovering something else. And that discovery comes with careful discernment, which takes time, intentionality, and community.