by Madeleine KandoWhen someone asks me 'Are you happy?', I never know what to say. It puts me on the defensive. It's like having to answer the question: 'Are you successful?' or 'Are you a good person?'. It's easier to answer questions like 'Are you happy at work?' (The answer is 'NO'. I am too old to teach ballet to three-year olds and would much rather spend my time writing silly stories like this one. )
Actually asking someone if they are happy is a bit forward. It's like asking someone if they have good sex. If you fail at being happy, you fail as a person. It's not like failing an exam which doesn't affect your entire self-image. If you are unhappy, you get a permanent bad grade and it's bad for your reputation.
But happiness, to me, is a constantly changing state of mind. It goes up and down, like being hungry or thirsty. I was happy last night when I heard that my oldest got engaged. I wasn't happy this morning when I looked at my credit card statement. In fact, if I have to ask myself the question 'Hey, Madeleine, are you happy?' I know that I have a problem.
Happy people don't have to ask themselves that question. They just know they are happy. It's only unhappy people who ask themselves: 'Mmm, I wonder if I am happy? If I am not happy, what kind of person does that make me? A failure! Why am I not happy? Maybe I should take a workshop in 'positive thinking...' And so on, and so on.
It's not only people who grade themselves as happy or unhappy. There are whole countries that are happier than others. Denmark, for instance is rated as the happiest nation on the Euro-barometer Survey. They tried to figure out why Danes are happier than Swedes or Finns, who are most similar to Danes and went looking for the cause of this extreme happiness. (Why Danes are smug: comparative study of life satisfaction in the European Union).
Starting from the least likely causes, they found out that it wasn't their hair color (Swedes and Finns are just as blond), their food (don't even try it), their climate (have you ever visited Denmark in winter?) or the fact that it is a welfare state (Sweden and Finland are that too). They discovered that the single most important reason for their happiness was that they have very low expectations for the future.
But to get back to people: Happy people are happy because they view the world in a positive light. They remember the past as positive, they don't think badly of others, they don't react to criticism, they don't change their opinion of themselves even when confronted with someone who is far superior to them**. They are happy because they are delusional and have an unshakable conviction that they are great people.
Happy people never have trouble choosing. When they have to choose between two deserts, they immediately prefer the one they selected. Me, I am the opposite. I cannot enjoy my dessert until I have taken a bite of the 'forbidden' one.
Being happy is one of those catch 22 situations again, a chicken or egg dilemma. Do happy people socialize more or does socializing make you more happy? Does being positive make you happy or does being happy make you more positive?
Be that as it may, for now I will continue to enjoy life by taking Bertrand Russell's quote to heart: 'To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.' leave comment here
** See: The Promise of Sustainable Happiness
12 comments:
I'm in sync with you completely on this, and so are most people I know. It's kind of a Buddhist outlook.
Happiness is like sunny weather; it comes and goes. But you can reach a state of pretty consistent contentment (or equanimity) if you see
happiness from that perspective.
That's why I don't even strive for happiness, but I do try to keep my balance through it all and stay content, which is more like acceptance of adversity while remembering to count one's blessings during times of hardship.
Some time back I was doing some research and discovered that the study of happiness has become a legitimate area of scientific inquiry. Call it happyology. Happiness ratings by country are all the rage.
The principal method used by happyologists is to ask people if they are happy and if so, how happy? They usually ask people to rate their happiness on a scale of 1-5 , but especially scientific happyolgists use a scale of 1-10.
As I think on it, it seems to me that studying happiness is a funny thing. Not funny "ha, ha" but "funny you should ask".
I am thinking that happiness comes in two types. There's the happiness that comes when your sadness and misery are eased. This idea of happiness is important because happiness and misery go hand-in-hand. If you are injured and in great pain and the pain becomes less, you are happy. And if the pain goes away even more, you are happier. So the most miserable of people have the greatest happiness potential and those less miserable cannot hope to compete.
This is "relative happiness", which is a fundamental principle applied in education and business. (See "torture", which works not because of the pain and sadness it induces but because of how much happier you can become when it stops. See also, "work ethic".
The other form of happiness comes when you have no injury at all. You are happy because you are well. I think of this as "absolute happiness". The problem for researchers is that when you are well you don't think about being happy unless that is, someone asks if you are happy, in which case you are likely to say, "Why do you ask?" because the question itself gets you to wondering if something is wrong or if something that will make you sad or miserable is about to happen.
I suppose you could say that so long as no one asks, your absolute happiness is the happiest kind of happiness because you are free from the misery that comes with the worry and pain of being unwell that makes for relative happiness, if you get what I mean.
Bertrand Russell it seems, didn't believe in absolute happiness. He believed striving to be who and what and where we are not, is necessary for happiness. I disagree. There is a difference between striving and doing with purpose. Relatively speaking, striving is painful but in selfless doing, we can experience absolute happiness.
Adapted from my blog entry, "Reflections on the Subject of Happiness". Great minds really do think alike!
Thanks Jan, for your wise response. The more you look for happiness the less chance you have to find it.
Marc: my initial idea was to write something about social justice and well-being.
If I lived in Somalia right now and was worried about having enough to eat, my happiness wouldn't be a priority.
Happiness is a luxury some people cannot afford.
Madeleine.
Interestingly, the happiness rankings do not correlate with material wealth. People in poorer nations consistently rank higher in happiness.
1. Costa Rica
2 Dominican Republic
3 Jamaica
4 Guatemala
5 Vietnam
6 Colombia
7 Cuba
8 El Salvador
9 Brazil
10 Honduras
Having traveled extensively in numbers 1, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 10, I can say that they definitely seem quite happy, despite their economic poverty.
Holland is down at 43 and the U.S. at 114! Pity poor Luxembourg at 122.
Although war and mayhem do put a damper on happiness, I do not think that happiness is a luxury enjoyed to a greater degree by the rich. Precisely the opposite seems to be true.
My thesis regarding "relative" happiness was meant to be ironic. It is the false happiness that is always to be found just around the corner, in striving to be someone else, somewhere else, doing something else.
My idea of "absolute" happiness is about being at home in your own skin and in your own situation. It is about being free from obsessive self-awareness. It is about facing outward in life in your relation with others and the world at large, and in dealing head-on with life's challenges moving forward.
Having traveled and lived in many poor countries--Afghanistan is rated among the poorest for example--I have found that on the whole these "poor" who live in hovels and huts, are infinitely more at ease with themselves than the grumbling self-obsessed rich. They tend to live immersed in family and community. Their laughter is filled with warmth rather than derision. They sing and dance a great deal. They work together to overcome difficulties. They are never alone in adversity even when they are alone.
Relative happiness is to live in a state of perpetual striving for something else. It is actually the negation of happiness--to want is to have not. Absolute happiness comes from being who you are where you are, addressing life's challenges in your here and now. This "doing" I think of as dancing with life--aka "living".
Marc:
All I meant to say is that a basic level of subsistence has to be met, before someone can feel human.
If there is too much misery, poverty and injustice in one's life, there is not much room for happiness?
One would think that at some level of deprivation, the capacity for experiencing happiness and joy must disappear, but there are accounts of seemly bottomless suffering that suggest that this may not be true. I hope that I nor anyone I know would ever have to test this thesis.
A standout is Viktor Frankl's account of his experience in the Nazi concentration camps. His life's work became devoted to trying to understand why some fell into hopeless despair and others did not.
Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's account of how he and his crew survived almost two years after being trapped in the Antarctic is also telling, as is the recent story of the Chilean miners trapped miles below the earth.
I could go on listing accounts of humans in desperate circumstances who, in rising to confront those circumstances, experience by their own accounts, happiness and joy. Psychologists say that they sing and dance to ward off their despair. I say they sing and dance because they are human beings actively dealing with their situation.
There is more than a little evidence to suggest that human happiness has more to do with actively dealing with one's circumstances, however desperate, than in one's actual prospects. The key word is "action" and I suspect that once being active becomes impossible, all happiness is dashed. But even that may be wrong as evidenced by the few accounts of people suffering "locked-in" syndrome. The story entitled "The Bell Jar" is just such an account.
Frankl arrived at the idea that human beings are soft-wired with a "will to meaning". The old joke about the optimist and pessimist comes to mind.
Briefly, a psychiatrist is asked by a parent to cure her children. One is an insufferable pessimist and the other an equally insufferable optimist.
The pessimist child is locked in a room filled with all that a child could desire. After a while the door is unlocked and the child is found to be sitting, crying amidst the riches, now all broken and sullied,
The optimist child is locked in a room piled with horse dung. After a while the door is unlocked and the child is found digging gleefully in the dung. "Why are so happy?" the doctor asks the child, and the child replies, "There must be a pony in here somewhere!"
It seems that so long as the human spirit is not smothered in excess and left with nothing to do, that spirit is fundamentally and actively optimistic.
These are just some thoughts I have long entertained. They are most certainly open to debate. I am inclined to think that human beings are genetically programmed optimists--that fear and loathing in the abstract sense, are basically cultural inventions.
I ask myself, how could humans have prevailed as long as they have, knowing as they do that they are mortal, if they were not fundamentally optimistic, even in the face of certain death?
There must be a pony in here somewhere!
BTW - Please don't feel overwhelmed by my flights. I enjoy thinking about these things and you do much to add to the fun. Keep up the great work!
Correction: The story of locked-in syndrome is The Diving Bell and the Butterfly and not the Bell Jar.
Sorry!
Marc:
I have great admiration for all your thoughts about the subject of 'happiness'.
I hope I am not too far off the mark by saying that being happy is a human capability, which sometimes does not get fulfilled due to societal cirmunstances.
So happiness is not just a matter of personal choice. Although how one reacts to adversity varies from individual to individual.
I like this post a lot. Although it is impossible for me to answer the question: ‘Are you a happy person?’ Sometimes I am and sometimes I am not. Unless one could tally the times I am happy and the times I am not, and grade me on the results?
Sometimes I wonder why most people consider me a happy person. It pleases me, of course, but if they knew how much misery working at the computer causes me, or things from the past that are a thousand times worse.
Of course when I walk in the sunshine and when my family comes to visit me, when I know that you are happy, or when I realize that people enjoy the work I have done as a photographer, then, I am infinitely happy.
That is why you cannot categorize someone as ‘happy’. Was Jesus happy? Ghandi or Albert Schweizer? Who knows..
Madeleine,
I do not think you are the least bit "far off"! Happiness and the "idea" of happiness seem to be at odds, which makes for rich conversation. As is often the case, the relationship between living and our "ideas" about life engender a paradox.
Happiness appears to be a state of consciousness in which we are actively engaged using our faculties of consciousness and sublimely unaware of ourselves going forward--dancing with the world so to speak. Everything is working as we deal with life's challenges in skillful and artful ways. I often imagine this as our way of soaring much as great birds soar upon thermals and updrafts along canyon walls. I happily imagine they are "happy" in their bird-ness.
Unhappiness seems to be a state of consciousness in which we become keenly aware of ourselves in pain, discomfort, sadness, etc. Our relation with the world and others has become problematic. Our doing in the world is not working and we become unable to move forward. Our dance is out of step and instead of looking outward we turn our faculty of consciousness inward upon our selves, making our selves the "object" of observation, evaluation, and analysis. In the dance of life we begin staring at our feet and as most of us have discovered, you can't dance while staring at your feet.
To see one's self as an object in the world is to become divided from the world and one's imaginative powers going forward. One finds his or her self out of the game, sitting on the bench, looking for a way to get back in. But the harder one works on one's self, the more divided he or she becomes, and the harder it is to get back into the game--turn and turn about!
Following his liberation from the WWII concentration camps, Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist by training, developed what he called Logo-therapy, which was very much at odds with the traditional idea of reviewing past memories and dream states--the rear-view mirror of life. Instead of reflection, he believed that to get back into the game, one must stop looking at one's feet and imaginatively aim forward in life and get back into action.
Alva Noe wrote a book called "Out of Our Heads: We are not our brains," in which he does an excellent job of explaining the irreducible relationship between consciousness and action.
We are not objects to be analyzed or machines to be reversed engineered, fixed or improved. We are actors "with" the world and the meaning of happiness is to be in the game, making our way forward, skillfully and artfully dancing with the world.
Using the imagery of birds again, happiness stands out as those times when we catch the updrafts of experience along canyon walls of the world and soar using our faculties of consciousness.
I find this way of looking at the meaning of happiness and unhappiness quite useful. It helps me get unstuck when I am stuck. It gives me a method for getting back into the game.
BTW - I apologize for straying from your central point, that social conditions play a key role in making the experience of happiness, a personal state of consciousness, more or less likely, and I do not disagree with you one bit.
What are the conditions that make the experience of happiness more or less likely?
Material wealth, in and of itself does not appear to be correlated with happiness. More does not equal happier.
Oppressive conditions of material deprivation, especially relative to others, do make the experience of happiness less likely.
Relations with others in which people are measured, judged and rank-ordered based on fixed standards of quality appear to reduce the likelihood of happiness.
In a very practical sense, when the means of making a substantive impact on our course moving forward is limited, people are less likely to experience happiness.
When a social system holds people "accountable" for their actions but denies them the means and opportunity to act "responsibly" in their relations with others, happiness becomes less likely.
On the whole, a social system that reduces people to objects to be worked on, makes happiness less likely. A social system that incorporates people as members of a greater whole moving forward in shared PURPOSE, makes happiness more likely.
Of this begs the question, what PURPOSES are best? This is always the most difficult question of all.
What is our aim?
Well, there you have it in a nutshell: 'What purposes are BEST?'
The good society comes up with a set of values that promotes happiness, or well-being, for the majority of its citizens.
I like the concept of Martha Nussbaum's 'Capabilities Approach', which says that what humans are 'capable' of achieving should be made possible by the system they live in. It is up to the inidviduals to take it from there.
(People are capable of committing atrocities too, but that would not be considered a valid candidate for 'social good').
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