Chapter 10: Personhood: The Duchenne Smile

Life is a continuous, transforming journey in pursuit of authentic happiness and meaning. For most, the true essence of happiness and meaning eludes them. Society keeps us continuously moving along the surface and in search of happiness through pleasures of earthly material and physical things. The belief in transcendence, something beyond the self, has dissipated to a “natural” or “this-worldly” view, and the worldview is limited to the experiences and knowledge of self and the present (Taylor, 2007, p. 594). This quick-paced, non-transcendent, limited, and earthly view of life disallows happiness to flourish because the whole is unseen, and life is not open to something beyond self; therefore, the ways of the quick-paced secular world do not fulfill the pursuit of authentic happiness and meaning. They distort and are counter to the essence of personhood.