The secret of happiness is: Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.

The line frames happiness not as a private feeling to be chased directly, but as a byproduct of commitment to a purpose that transcends the self. “Something more important than you are” points to projects, people, communities, or ideals that outlast individual gratification and reorient attention away from rumination and status anxiety. The injunction to “dedicate your life” emphasizes sustained, identity-shaping engagement rather than episodic altruism. In Dennett’s broadly naturalistic outlook, meaning and value are constructed through human practices; this aphorism condenses that view into practical counsel: durable well-being tends to arise when one’s agency is organized around larger, ongoing aims that invite responsibility, contribution, and narrative coherence.