There is a bit of a backlash against David Cameron’s desire to measure the nation’s happiness. Not that you can’t measure some of the things that often make us happy, or some of the signs that indicate we have reached a certain level of happiness. Just that the contemporary obsession with seeking happiness might actually be making us more unhappy!
Tim Lott wrote about this in the Times yesterday (2:4-5; paywall).
In this country we seem to take our cue from the American Constitution and believe in the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as an inalienable right. In this formulation of human fulfilment, happiness is like an elusive animal that has to be tracked down mercilessly, until we finally capture, then cage it.
This world view is misconceived. In his recent book, Against Happiness: In Praise of Melancholy, the writer Edward G. Wilson called America ‘a land of crazed and compulsive hopefulness’ and deplored the idea that unhappiness had become something to be ashamed of.
Much the same argument was put forward in Barbara Ehrenreich’s counterblast against the ‘positive thinking’ culture, Smile or Die, in which she complained that during her experience of breast cancer it was distressing constantly to be told that she had to ‘stay positive’.
Both Ehrenreich and Wilson are correct – the pursuit of happiness, as we currently imagine it, is counterproductive. The thing about happiness is, the more you seek it, the more it eludes you. As the novelist C. P. Snow wrote, ‘The pursuit of happiness is a most ridiculous phrase; if you pursue happiness you’ll never find it.’ But we continue as if we took the fairytales literally, hoping to find a way of living ‘happily ever after’. We can’t; and neither should we want to.
Because there’s no such thing as happiness – at least as it is confected by marketers and advertisers. There is a whole commercial world, quite apart from that other imaginary world of fairytales, that is invested in telling us not only that something called happiness is achievable, but that you are a failure if you don’t have it.
This flies in the face of every fact of human nature. It is the most normal, natural and everyday occurrence in life to feel unhappy. The rejections, slights, embarrassments, petty failures, snubs, stresses and disappointments of life are simply not avoidable… Unhappiness is not some dreaded malignancy to be avoided at all costs, but a proper and inevitable part of the warp and weft of life.
Then he comes back to his central point:
…that the pursuit of happiness is actually what leads to unhappiness. Rather than spending our lives indulging in this hopeless quest, we should seek acceptance of what is humanly inevitable – the alteration of happiness and unhappiness. Recognition of this unpredictable process has the great virtue of avoiding an extra layer of unhappiness, that is, the disappointment of unrealistic hopes.
So we have normal happiness, and normal unhappiness, without the extra level of unhappiness that comes from being unhappy that we are unhappy. Easy!
There is, indeed, a culture which encourages us all to chase happiness. I am not for a second suggesting that the desire to be happy is intrinsically wrong. It is the way the notion is ‘sold’ to us which causes the problems – if you are unhappy or you don’t desire to seek happiness, then there is something radically wrong is the message I get from the whole thing. We live in a society where people of all age groups seek instant gratification from whatever or wherever their whim takes them in the expectation that this will result in happiness; the resulting lack of happiness after a lot of effort is, I would suggest, a factor which leads to unhappiness. Many of the things I alluded to are those which are temporary in their very nature, be they good food, wine, exercise, concerts or, dare I say, sex. So, once the experience is finished, the pleasure is over and soon the drudgery resumes.
Happiness surely results from those things which have a lasting effect on our lives such as relationships, job satisfaction, faith, to name only three. Such things are those which can characterise a happy and contented life rather than the things which pass us by very quickly.
This just feels to simple and miserable and cynical to me.
When I did my free mind and wellbeing training course, I met this wonderful lady of Maori origin, who put into words and pictures something which I already deeply understood to be true.
If we imagine ourselves to be like a deep river or ocean, in its very deepest depths the great source is drawn or flows with a silent, sure, deeply calm, peaceful, tranquil but undeniable strength and this is = to our deepest happiness.
However even though the deeps remain calm, at the top of the river or ocean it is quite possible to be either calm, or choppy, or completely stormy depending on the current weather conditions, or activity going on upon the surface. This is equal to the effects that life has on our immediate emotions. It is of course possible to be temporarily extremely unhappy etc whilst still possessing a deeply held happiness.
For Christian’s this of course is having faith and trust in God. A deeply innate happiness that despite what life throws at us, we can rest assured that our innate happiness is deeper than the fickle immediate emotions of life, or even death.
It seems very unfair, I know, but I think – and the evidence suggests – that by and large you’re born either a happy person or an unhappy one, or somewhere in between, and you’re more or less stuck with it. It relates to the degree of neuroticism (one of the ‘big 5′ genetically-influenced personality traits) you inherit from your parents. As for why, down the generations, unhappiness hasn’t died out, the answer is that it often makes a lot of sense, in evolutionary terms. People who are happy and optimistic in outlook don’t tend to worry much that things might go wrong, and they take more risks – and sometimes they come badly unstuck. Watch ‘Jackass’ and see how relentless optimists get their fun. As for me, I am of that kind. I rarely worry, even when I probably should, and I still skateboard, at the age of 49 – despite numerous broken bones and concussions, and despite twisting my pelvis and losing the use of my legs for 4 days last year (I also woke up a week later in a pool of blood as the hematoma I suffered made its way out.)
But as soon as I could limp I was back on my board again. Unhappy, worried people tend to be more cautious – and they may be right. Just less happy.