BoumTAC

Happiness and the Test of Time

Published on October 6, 2025

The Inadequacy of Traditional Goals

Conventional wisdom about happiness focuses largely on the importance of having purpose and goals. This idea is hardly revolutionary — countless self-help books and motivational speakers have hammered this point into public consciousness. Yet this focus on purpose, while not entirely wrong, misses a crucial element that explains why so many purpose-driven people remain deeply unsatisfied with their lives.

The missing element is what we might call the durability principle: meaningful work must not only serve a purpose, but must create value that endures beyond the immediate moment of its creation.

The Trap of Ephemeral Utility

I discovered this gap through my own experience. I've been maintaining Lounio for a year, a website listing concerts in Toulouse. This project takes me a few hours per month and attracts several thousand monthly visitors. The utility is undeniable, the public recognition real. Yet I experience persistent frustration: once the concerts are over, my data instantly loses its value. Knowing that an artist performed on a certain day, at a certain venue, for a certain price, becomes as relevant as last week's newspaper.

This personal experience reveals a fundamental flaw in our conception of goal-related happiness. It's not enough to be useful; that usefulness must transcend the instantaneous.

Lessons from History: When Genius Isn't Enough

History offers us striking illustrations of this distinction. Mozart and Emily Dickinson produced works of inestimable value, but never tasted the satisfaction of their recognition. Dickinson's poems remained in her drawers until her death. Mozart, despite some success during his lifetime, lived in financial precarity, his true consecration only occurring in the 19th century. Charles Bukowski, for his part, chained together precarious odd jobs for decades — postal worker, parking lot attendant, factory worker — before achieving literary success past age 50. Their genius was real, but their personal happiness was deprived of it during most of their creative existence.

The Happiest Mason

This reality finds remarkable echo in Studs Terkel's survey, Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do. The author interviewed 130 people in the most varied professions: workers, traders, lawyers, pilots, teachers, doctors, garbage collectors, housewives, etc. Contrary to received ideas, even prestigious professions generate frustration and disappointment. The happiest of all? A mason. Why? Because he passes daily by houses he built, sometimes 40 years earlier. These structures remain, shelter families, watch generations grow. His work continues to bear fruit decades after its completion.

The Lindy Effect in Action

Michael Caine expresses a similar truth in Don't Look Back, You'll Trip Over:

"The idea that something I did so long ago could mean something to a twenty-year-old today... You never think about it when you're making a film, but now that I see it, I find it both humbling and exciting. None of us thought for a second that what we were doing might mean something to future generations. But now that it does, it means a lot to me."

Some of his films have fallen into oblivion, others continue to enchant new generations. This permanence nourishes his happiness far more than any ephemeral success.

Nassim Taleb perfectly illustrates this principle. His book The Black Swan, published 18 years ago, was not only a success but continues to sell with the same vigor. As he observes himself on Twitter: "While almost all books have a half-life between 2 and 6 months, it does not appear to have a half-life." This phenomenon, which he calls the Lindy effect, demonstrates that certain creations defy the planned obsolescence of our era.

The Developers' Paradox

Conversely, consider the case of software developers. Many suffer from a lack of meaning, paradoxically. They spend their days creating, building innovative products. Yet the majority of their projects never see the light of day. When they do succeed, either no one uses them, or they quickly sink into oblivion. In the best case, they become "legacy" after five years and are entirely remade. This dynamic generates a feeling of futility: no one benefits from what was created a decade ago.

Parental Investment: A Model of Durability

This contrasts sharply with raising children, which consistently ranks among the most fulfilling experiences in life despite its immediate difficulties and frustrations. Parents invest countless hours in their children, and this investment bears fruit over decades. The weekend spent teaching a child to ride a bike pays dividends twenty years later when that same child teaches their own offspring. The work endures and multiplies.

This temporal dimension of meaningful work has profound implications for career choices and life decisions. It suggests that we should evaluate opportunities not only by their immediate impact or social utility, but by their potential to create lasting value. The question becomes: will this work matter in five, ten, or twenty years?

The durability principle doesn't invalidate the importance of having purpose — it refines and deepens this requirement. Purpose alone is insufficient; purpose must be married to permanence. The goal is not just to do meaningful work, but to create meaning that persists, accumulates, and continues to serve others long after the initial effort has been concluded.

Conclusion

The lesson I draw from this is clear: having goals is not enough to be fulfilled. These goals must withstand the test of time. Being useful at moment T is only momentary satisfaction. The true key to happiness lies in this ability to wake up one morning, five years later, and see that a completed project continues to provide happiness and utility.

This distinction isn't just philosophical for me; it has become pragmatic. It now guides my choices of personal projects, my investments of time and energy. This is why every article I write deliberately avoids ephemeral current events. If you come across one of my texts a year after its publication, it retains the same interest as the day it was released.

Authentic happiness doesn't reside in the accumulation of ephemeral accomplishments, but in the patient construction of a legacy that will survive us — or at least, that will accompany us long enough for us to savor its permanence.