welcome to authentic happiness
This evening I have been trying to find Happiness. On Google.
A few weeks ago I read an article on Salon called "Getting over happiness" about Steven Hayes' new pop-psych book "Get out of your mind and into your life." Hayes contends that we live in a culture wherein feeling good is valued above living well. Could it be true that we live in a culture bereft of meaningful values to give us a foundation for satisfaction? Well, yes, of course it's possible and even glaringly obvious when one starts to look closely at the angst and dissatisfaction all around us.
In the past twenty years or so the standard statistical quantifier for happiness has shifted from "standard of living" to "quality of life." Someone cleverly noticed that people with mortgages and jobs do not necessarily live better lives than those living in abject poverty. In fact, someone living in a hut with fifteen family members may be happier and enjoying a higher quality of life than someone working in a factory and barely scraping by, although the latter technically has a higher standard of living. The Quality of Life Research Center provides insight into motivation for living, as well as some intelligent research on how creative engagement enriches quality of life.
Hayes' book begins with the sentence "People suffer." There's a lot packed into that tiny sentence. We are programmed from a very young age to categorize any kind of suffering as "wrong" and when the inevitable flood of pain and ugliness starts to flow through the walls of the fortress we panic and try to patch them up. People think that because life hurts they must have something wrong with them. It couldn't possibly be normal to be unhappy, could it?
My friend and I were chatting yesterday about a piece he heard on NPR about happiness research. The happiness researchers have discovered that the more rich, married, white, republican and religious you are the more likely you are to report that you are happy. Looking at the demographic, we agreed that maybe we'd stick to miserable for now. Frequently people who claim to be happy are really not satisfied with their lives, but they have cultivated a definition for happiness that fits their reality. 'If I'm married and live in a beautiful house, etc etc, then I must be happy, right?'
In Betty Friedan's 1963 feminist classic "The Feminine Mystique" she examines "the problem with no name." In the 1950's, at the height of post-war prosperity, thousands of "happy" housewives showed up at the local GP or psychiatrist complaining of headaches, fatigue, malaise, ennui, anxiety, and horrible horrible guilt over not being happy. They had everything they were supposed to want and they felt very isolated in their unhappiness. By all appearances, pretty much everyone else was happy. It was only when these miserable women started talking to each other that they realized it was normal to be unhappy in a state of oppression. Thus began the latest women's movement.
So, what is causing the new "problem with no name"? Are people universally stifled within a confusing web of oppressions? Yeah, I'd bet five bucks on it.
According to Hayes, the key to a rich satisfying life is defining and acting according to a set of values. I haven't read the book, and I usually think these trendy pop-psych books are hogwash, but something about this rings true. He is not attempting to provide a cure for suffering, because suffering is normal. So our only choices are to either drown ourselves in whatever numbs the pain, or to accept the pain as our own and do something meaningful and engaging. Of course there's always suicide, but what a trite cop out that is!
There's something missing here though. Okay, suffering is inevitably part of being human, but isn't taking the stance that it's "normal to suffer" something akin to those doctors telling the unhappy housewives there was nothing wrong with them and giving them some sleeping pills? There is something wrong, but it's not something wrong with us.
Tonight I searched Google for Happiness and ended up at the "authentic happiness quiz." I scored 2 out of 5 on the authentic happiness scale. When I registered on the site I got an email titled "welcome to authentic happiness"... ha!
A few weeks ago I read an article on Salon called "Getting over happiness" about Steven Hayes' new pop-psych book "Get out of your mind and into your life." Hayes contends that we live in a culture wherein feeling good is valued above living well. Could it be true that we live in a culture bereft of meaningful values to give us a foundation for satisfaction? Well, yes, of course it's possible and even glaringly obvious when one starts to look closely at the angst and dissatisfaction all around us.
In the past twenty years or so the standard statistical quantifier for happiness has shifted from "standard of living" to "quality of life." Someone cleverly noticed that people with mortgages and jobs do not necessarily live better lives than those living in abject poverty. In fact, someone living in a hut with fifteen family members may be happier and enjoying a higher quality of life than someone working in a factory and barely scraping by, although the latter technically has a higher standard of living. The Quality of Life Research Center provides insight into motivation for living, as well as some intelligent research on how creative engagement enriches quality of life.
Hayes' book begins with the sentence "People suffer." There's a lot packed into that tiny sentence. We are programmed from a very young age to categorize any kind of suffering as "wrong" and when the inevitable flood of pain and ugliness starts to flow through the walls of the fortress we panic and try to patch them up. People think that because life hurts they must have something wrong with them. It couldn't possibly be normal to be unhappy, could it?
My friend and I were chatting yesterday about a piece he heard on NPR about happiness research. The happiness researchers have discovered that the more rich, married, white, republican and religious you are the more likely you are to report that you are happy. Looking at the demographic, we agreed that maybe we'd stick to miserable for now. Frequently people who claim to be happy are really not satisfied with their lives, but they have cultivated a definition for happiness that fits their reality. 'If I'm married and live in a beautiful house, etc etc, then I must be happy, right?'
In Betty Friedan's 1963 feminist classic "The Feminine Mystique" she examines "the problem with no name." In the 1950's, at the height of post-war prosperity, thousands of "happy" housewives showed up at the local GP or psychiatrist complaining of headaches, fatigue, malaise, ennui, anxiety, and horrible horrible guilt over not being happy. They had everything they were supposed to want and they felt very isolated in their unhappiness. By all appearances, pretty much everyone else was happy. It was only when these miserable women started talking to each other that they realized it was normal to be unhappy in a state of oppression. Thus began the latest women's movement.
So, what is causing the new "problem with no name"? Are people universally stifled within a confusing web of oppressions? Yeah, I'd bet five bucks on it.
According to Hayes, the key to a rich satisfying life is defining and acting according to a set of values. I haven't read the book, and I usually think these trendy pop-psych books are hogwash, but something about this rings true. He is not attempting to provide a cure for suffering, because suffering is normal. So our only choices are to either drown ourselves in whatever numbs the pain, or to accept the pain as our own and do something meaningful and engaging. Of course there's always suicide, but what a trite cop out that is!
There's something missing here though. Okay, suffering is inevitably part of being human, but isn't taking the stance that it's "normal to suffer" something akin to those doctors telling the unhappy housewives there was nothing wrong with them and giving them some sleeping pills? There is something wrong, but it's not something wrong with us.
Tonight I searched Google for Happiness and ended up at the "authentic happiness quiz." I scored 2 out of 5 on the authentic happiness scale. When I registered on the site I got an email titled "welcome to authentic happiness"... ha!
posted by kitty | 9:42 PM
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