A bit of a provocative question, I know. It can't be pointless if so many people seem to pursue it. There's so much talk about "how to be happy" that it's unlikely you haven't come across at least one of those people who tell you that the answer lies in exercise, meditation, nutrition, creative expression, dietary supplements or quantum-electric stimulation but most importantly in buying their garbage. I've previously posted about how stupid of a goal the pursuit of happiness is. So this post is not going to be about that again. Instead, I want to discuss a phenomenon I recently noticed that seems really paradoxical to me. Despite all the struggle to become happy, people don't seem to care about happiness very much.
Don't believe me? Well, let's look at some evidence. Exhibit A: People tend to ask each other how they are quite frequently. What happens if you reply that you're good? They say "good to hear" and continue with whatever they're doing. Feeling good is the assumed default state. It's the only way to respond to that question without raising concerns. It's probably the most socially acceptable reason to lie, and people do lie about it. In certain situations it might not even be socially acceptable to *not* lie about it. Regardless, people never ask you why you're so content with your life, how you have accomplished this very difficult feat. It's an unspoken rule that we all just pretend that feeling good is normal and can easily be achieved without further instructions.
Now you might say that doing fine is not the same thing as happiness. You might define happiness differently, which brings me to Exhibit B: lack of language to describe happiness. Humans are bad in general to develop language for emotions, but for happiness it's especially bad. There's just the one word being used for all forms of happiness. That's right, there are multiple forms of happiness. Emotions manifest themselves through chemicals in our bodies and there's four very different ones that come to mind: Dopamine, Serotonin, Oxytocin and Endorphins. All four have very distinct functions, yet I have heard all of them be referred to as "the happiness chemical" at some point. Yes, that's right, not "one of the happiness chemicals" not "part of the happiness system", no, "the happiness chemical". Because most people don't care. And sure, you don't need to care about biochemistry, but my argument is that I have no other way than to refer to biochemistry in order to show that there are different forms of happiness. Different forms of happiness that you can feel in your own body, if only you paid attention to them. Why do we have no words for these?
Finally, Exhibit C: We're not too fond of happy people. In fact, it's kind of a trope in many popular stories that the imperfect and thus relatable protagonist gets confronted with some side characters that are painfully happy. Their life seems to be so flawless that through our own envy we feel nothing but hatred towards them. It's the same feeling we get for all those perfect lives people pretend to live on social media. Although we know it's not real, we can't stand the fact that those people seem to have every bit of their lives figured out while we don't. Were you ever in a situation where you felt ashamed for being better off than someone else? Did you ever feel people reacting coldly to you telling them what grade you got in a test, how long you've been together with your partner, or how much money you have? Empathy seems to work well for sharing pain but it absolutely will not work for sharing happiness. When people say "I'm so happy for you", that's either not true or they really love you.
Now that you've examined the evidence, do you believe me? Do you see how little people care about happiness? You might already have your own explanation for this phenomenon, but here's mine: Why would you analyze happiness? We analyze things because we want to use the amazing capabilities of our minds to transform the world around us so it better suits our needs. But we do not want to transform happiness. It's good the way it is. When you're resting in the arms of a loved one in a beautiful moment with nothing on your mind but pure enjoyment, why would you ruin it by thinking "Hmmm, what kind of happiness am I feeling right now? Can I classify it? What's the mechanism leading to this sensation?" Also, why would we care about happy people? There's so much to do all the time. There's so many things you might do to make the world better for you or others who are not happy. Happy people don't need anything, right? If you're running around with a fire extinguisher, constantly extinguishing fires, why would you waste time with things that are not on fire?
I can tell you why: because some things might catch on fire later and burn much more violently than any of the things burning now. If we're blind to the mechanisms behind happiness, we have no understanding of what might happen if we loose it and what we need to do to prevent that from happening. Thinking about scenarios where we loose something that makes us happy is like feeling the pain for something that might never happen. It's not fun. But I'd argue that it's very important. Not only can it help you prevent such scenarios, it will certainly help you to appreciate what you have. There's a popular wisdom that you only learn to appreciate something after you lost it. Consider how stupid that is. Luckily, it's not true. Once you're fully prepared to loose something, you can appreciate it while you still have it and loosing it won't hurt as much. But that requires you to know what made you happy in the first place.
You might think of another, much more straight-forward reason to understand happiness: to understand what caused it so you can have it more often. But keep in mind that your brain does that, no matter what you do. That's why we are happy in the first place, to keep that mechanism going. Unfortunately, that makes it easy to confuse the things that actually make us happy with the things that lead up to them. Our brain tends to associate everything connected to a happy moment with happiness and that is very exploitable. It's the reason people buy useless junk on vacation, because they associate their "souvenirs" with the enjoyment of their trip. It's the reason people get addicted to gambling, because they associate placing a bet with getting a win. It's even the reason people go to war, because they associate all the good things in their life with their country.
While you may think of these examples however you like, being aware of the mechanism behind them lets you make a more conscious decision about them. Should that little plastic elephant really make you happy or is someone just abusing the fact that it was shoved into your face right after riding an actual elephant? Should pulling the lever of the slot machine really make you happy or is someone abusing the fact that you cannot accurately estimate the probability of another win? Should you really be proud of your country or is someone just abusing the fact that you've never lived anywhere else? I want to stress that I'm not saying you shouldn't buy souvenirs, that you should never gamble and that it's always wrong to join the military. Just that you should be aware of these natural biases that exploit the mechanisms behind happiness to get you to do things that you might later regret.
I could go on and on about reasons why it may be beneficial to deepen your understanding of happiness, even if it might make you less happy in the short term. But this blog post has become very long once again. I'm aware that throwing walls of text at the internet is probably not the way to reach the masses. So, if you are actually reading this: Thank you! You are really the best kind of person.
