Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have

Viktor E. Frankl, the great psychiatrist, philosopher, and survivor of the concentration camps, once spoke a truth that hums like an eternal chord: “Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it.” In these words, drawn from the depths of both intellect and suffering, he reveals a paradox that confounds the restless human heart. For in our pursuit of happiness and success, we grasp and chase and demand — yet the more tightly we cling, the more both elude us. Frankl teaches that joy and fulfillment are not prizes to be hunted, but by-products of meaning. They bloom naturally, like wildflowers along the path of purpose, when one’s eyes are fixed not upon them, but upon the road ahead.

The origin of this wisdom lies in Frankl’s own life — a life marked by unimaginable loss and by the triumph of the spirit over despair. A prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, stripped of family, freedom, and future, Frankl witnessed humanity at its lowest depths. Yet even in that abyss, he discovered a truth luminous and indestructible: that life retains meaning under all circumstances, and that man’s greatest freedom is his ability to choose his attitude toward fate. Those who survived were not necessarily the strongest, but those who found a purpose — to love, to serve, to hope, to endure for the sake of something beyond themselves. From that revelation grew his philosophy of logotherapy, the belief that meaning, not happiness, is the central pursuit of the human soul.

When Frankl says, “Happiness must happen,” he speaks against the feverish modern notion that joy can be engineered, purchased, or planned. To “let it happen” is not to be idle, but to live in alignment with purpose, to act from love and truth without demanding a reward. The one who fixates on happiness makes it flee, for the gaze of self-interest chokes the heart. But the one who gives themselves wholly to their task — the artist painting from wonder, the parent caring from love, the scientist seeking truth — finds that happiness has come silently to dwell beside them. It is never seized; it is received.

So too with success. Frankl reminds us that success is not something to be chased, but something that follows naturally from authentic living. The man who pursues success for its own sake becomes enslaved to vanity and fear; the one who strives to serve, to create, to contribute to the world, finds success arriving quietly as his companion. Consider the example of Mother Teresa, who never sought recognition or praise. Her aim was simple — to love the unloved, to care for the dying. Yet through her service, success and honor found her, not because she sought them, but because she forgot herself in the work of compassion. Such is the paradox of greatness: when we cease to desire it for its own sake, we become worthy of it.

Frankl’s insight echoes the wisdom of the ancients. The Stoic philosophers taught that virtue — the alignment of one’s will with reason and truth — is sufficient for happiness. The Buddha taught that attachment is the root of suffering, and that peace arises when one acts without clinging to outcomes. Frankl, standing amid the ruins of the twentieth century, renewed this eternal truth for the modern soul: that the way to joy lies through self-forgetfulness, and the way to fulfillment lies through service. To “not care” is not to be indifferent, but to be free — free from the grasping, anxious self that demands life conform to its desires.

Even in our daily lives, this wisdom holds true. The student who obsesses over grades forgets the joy of learning and loses both knowledge and happiness. The lover who clings too tightly to affection suffocates what might have flourished freely. The worker who labors only for wealth finds no satisfaction in his toil. Yet the one who works with sincerity, who learns out of wonder, who loves without possession — that person, though expecting nothing, receives everything. For happiness and success are like shadows: they follow us only when we walk steadily toward the light of meaning.

So, my listener, take this teaching into your heart: do not pursue happiness — pursue purpose. Do not crave success — crave sincerity. Live each day not in search of reward, but in service of what is right and true. Pour yourself into your work, your art, your love, your duty, and release the outcome to life itself. Then, as Frankl assures us, happiness will come as a guest unbidden — not loud and fleeting, but quiet and abiding. For when you cease to clutch at joy, joy begins to dwell within you, and when you no longer chase success, success begins to walk beside you. This is the secret that the wise have always known: that the meaning of life is not to seize happiness, but to become worthy of it by living fully, bravely, and selflessly in the service of something greater than oneself.