Happiness is overvalued. Meaning or purpose is undervalued.
Happiness is based on a transition: something new, a change of circumstances, and is by its nature temporary. Meaning and purpose are long term.
Seek meaning, not happiness.
Hold your horses a bit here. Just because some mental model works for your, please don't do blanket statements for entire human civilization.
I for example pursue many utterly selfish hobbies without any proper meaning to me or anybody else, full of objective dangers that can kill me in case of lack of attention (or pure bad time at bad spot situation), last time this Sunday (ended up with scratches all over me after some nasty snow field slide, albeit this is very rare outcome).
The only meaning of those things (hiking, climbing, diving, paraglide, ski alpinism etc.) is feeling 200% alive, being extremely content with my life which can be described as... you get it... happiness. Climbing to the top of some peak doesn't have any proper meaning, it has been done 1000s before and will be done after me, the only meaning is how it feels during and after the adventure.
Maybe its just juggling words and we both mean same thing at the end, but I know far too many people technically unable to find long term happiness, to see how that sucks. Most of them are these highly-driven super-competitive types that have lives that look great on outside... but only if you don't know them very well.
> Climbing to the top of some peak doesn't have any proper meaning, it has been done 1000s before and will be done after me, the only meaning is how it feels during and after the adventure.
I don't quite understand what is your concept of meaning. You say that you pursue all these difficult and dangerous things that make you feel 200% alive and extremely content with your life. I wonder, how much more meaning could you ask for? To me, feeling completely alive while immersed in something is pretty much the definition of a meaningful activity! Happiness and contentment seems to be a nice bonus caused by the realization that you are in the middle of something that feels very meaningful to you.
Maybe its about about direction - inwards vs outwards. Dunno. But climbing some big rock, risking my life definitely doesn't feel like it has big meaning to me. I am not saving anybody hanging there. But it makes me happy. Working for some NGO, being a doctor or improving peoples lives would definitely be in the category of work with purpose/meaning.
It sounds like you've taken the aphorism to be all-encompassing.
I didn't mean "pursue meaning and forget happiness", rather that it is better to weight your goals in life to the former, as it is more sustainable.
In general I think aphorisms are rules of thumb. All such observations require careful interpretation/application to enact them usefully.
