The Importance of the Family for Attaining Happiness

When a need is not met, suffering occurs. The greater the need not met, the greater the suffering. Therefore, in order to solve human suffering, an understanding of human need is critical. Because suffering opposes happiness, human needs must first be met in order to achieve human happiness.

Though each human being is unique and constantly is a state of transformation, all human beings share a fundamental human nature. One central foundation of this human nature is the need for relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. Another central foundation of human nature comes from our nature as biological entities; we have the need to reproduce and raise offspring.

The family is the best and unrivaled way in which both these needs are best addressed. Only the family can provide relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. The family is also the best and unrivaled way wherein reproduction is safest and in which children are raised well.

There are variations among families; some are healthy and functional, some are unhealthy and dysfunctional. Some families are more intimate, deeply caring, loving, and create safety, stability, dependability, and responsibility. Some families lack these virtues.

These variations come from differences in behavior. These differences in behavior ultimately come from different values. Different values manifest through different understandings and different degrees of self-cultivation. Different understandings of values and different degrees of self-cultivation form character, and character dictates behavior, and behavior changes family life.

Family life allows one to attain relationships that are intimate, deeply caring, loving, and built upon stability, dependability, responsibility, and a sense of permanency. These relationships fulfill fundamental human needs, and create happiness where otherwise there would be suffering.

Therefore, to attain happiness, one must fulfill one's needs. Because one needs intimate relationships, one needs good family life. Because one needs good family life, one must have the right values, right understanding, right cultivation, leading to right character, right behavior, and right family life.

To ignore this reality is to perpetuate ourselves in a state of stress and suffering.