Lessons in happiness
- anyone else still trying to work out what happiness actually is?
“Happy?”
A near-rhetorical question asked by my school teachers when they had gone over a task for homework or my brother once he’s sorted something out like booking dinner. But of course the word happy in that context is a proxy for “Do you understand?” or “Are you okay with that?”
That’s the problem with words. Language, in fact. The word happy has so many meanings but what we aspire to as humans is ‘true happiness’ which implies a long term state of being.
I’m a pretty happy person in general, but sometimes I feel sad. That’s normal. But the modern world’s obsession with happiness is driving me to distraction (and I’m already distracted a lot of the time).
Steven Bartlett has advertised for a head of happiness recently. He has tagged ‘health’ on to it which makes it a bit less nebulous but what exactly does a head of happiness do? Why is different to wellbeing? In fact is it different?
Being a curious practitioner I have been on a bit of a trawl over the years around being happy and happiness, mainly to check out where what I think it means stands compared to others.
Years ago I read book called Happy by Derren Brown . He was big on the Stoics who seemed to revel in four ‘virtues’ - wisdom, justice, courage, and moderation, not really what most people would think of as being happy. I kind of got it. Do your duty, don’t go OTT and find purpose and satisfaction through your actions.
My great friend Rangan Chatterjee’s Happy Mind, Happy Life is an insightful book. He talks about junk happiness (short term dopamine hits that are meaningless and get confused for happiness). He takes a 360 degree approach including themes like alignment, just ‘being’, getting off your phone and being present which set the scene for being able to be happy.
I also did the Yale course by Laurie Santos some years ago just after it launched, which was probably the most ‘scientific’ endeavour and found her vignettes useful. In some ways she was good at pointing out what happiness wasn’t and made you do exercises (or rewirements) to reinforce a healthy way of behaving, thinking and feeling.
My problem is despite having read what the experts think I still don’t quite know what happy is meant to be. The issue is that our only way as humans of articulating happiness in print, is by using other words like content, fulfilled, joy-filled, warm, enriched, comfortable, relaxed, calm, at peace or whatever else comes to mind. The idea of long term happiness is one I find hard to get my head around, as everyone has ups and downs in their lives, but a net positive in terms of how you feel or deal with things would probably confer a happy life. Having said that, I know of so many instances where illness or a change in circumstances has ended that run of happy years.
My own take is that happiness is a pleasant state of being, lasting for a moment or if we are lucky, several moments before our flow is broken by something or someone. And in order to ‘be happy’ we must savour those moments as much as we can. But I’m no expert. Would love to know what you think.
Great question Ayan.
For me happiness is a state of being, an ‘ease’ not to be confused with inactivity or avoidance of difficult things. But a flow, an ease in how I approach whatever the moment, day or week has in store for me.
I don’t like negative definitions, but the absence of angst/anger etc etc is true of happiness, a person just ‘is’ at ease and open, curious for more.
Happiness however definitely doesn’t mean life is all plain-sailing … it is entirely possible to be happy AND still be journeying thro complex life challenges.
For those able to achieve that state, there is gratitude for the sweet moments that pepper the tough stuff, and also an innate acceptance that life is inherently unpredictable in both quantity and content…. So best enjoy the ride.
Lovely read for a sunny Monday morning - am now off to get ready for a circular bike ride to the coast and a tasty lunch at the half way mark where we can walk along the beach in the Spring sunshine. Whilst there walking, I’ll most likely mull over some of this weeks foreseeable challenges and decide how best to prioritize my time and energies.
Happy days 🙃
I did the Laurie Santos course too. It was the perfect time to do it in 2020 lockdown, and recovering from burnout at the time.
I combined this with studying the “economics of wellbeing” as an added module during my MBA program.
This was essentially a deep dive into the history and all the way to current perspectives, but based on its association with economics.
I loved the 3 ways to consider happiness as being 1. Hedonism 2. Life Satisfaction 3. Purpose and I guess an added being flow states.
We’re complicated beings and I like to think of it as a requirement of all of these efforts, rather than entirely focusing on one, and we’ll have different predominant needs in different times of our lives