Some thoughts about happiness

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about happiness.  I recently finished reading “The Happiness Project” and its sequel “Happier at Home” and like any good books they triggered plenty of self reflection.

I put off reading these books for quite awhile and until recently I wasn’t really sure why.  Shamefully, I am a huge fan of the genre of “stunt journalism”.  If someone spends a year eating only pickles or living according to the principles of Dr. Seuss, I want to read about it.  By the way, if anyone wants to write a book about either of these things please feel free to steal these ideas.  I guarantee you will have at least one reader.  So the idea of a writer spending a year trying to increase her personal happiness should have been right up my alley.

I’ve read reviews of the “Happiness Project” where the author, Gretchen Rubin, was criticized for her privileged lifestyle.   The question seemed to be why can’t this woman with money, security, a healthy family and even a bit of fame just be happy with what she has?  And if she isn’t happy with her life, how can anyone of more modest circumstances be happy with theirs?

These are extremely valid questions and probably one of my issues as well, although I couldn’t express it as clearly.  I think the problem I had with the “Happiness Project” books was my fear that I was going to be told that if I wasn’t happy it was my own fault. That there were specific things I needed to do to make myself happier and if I didn’t do them I didn’t deserve to be happy.  I also didn’t want to visualize or chant or anything like that.  Ultimately, I enjoyed both “Happiness Project” books and began looking for ways to find more happiness in my own life.

It also got me thinking though about the ways in which we are happy for other people.  It seems like in certain circumstances we feel like happiness has to be earned.  Much has been said about how our culture loves to root for the underdog (until they get too high and mighty of course) and I’ve noticed this behavior in myself as well.

I was in a 13 year dating relationship with a man throughout my late teens and 20’s.  I have to specify “dating” because it never went any further than that.  We never lived together and were never married or even engaged.  We had the type of relationship that no one would be jealous of, but in my mind I invented a story about how happy everyone would be for us once we finally got married.  This fictional “everyone” would attend the wedding and breathe a collective sigh of relief at the exchange of vows.  It would be like we all ran a marathon together and I expected a great big finisher’s medal in the form of a wedding ring.

And why did I think everyone would be so happy for us?  Because we had “earned” it.  We had persevered through our struggles and come out on the other side.  I realize now that probably no one thought like this and it was only my way of protecting myself from feelings of inadequacy.  I used to scoff at people who had quick engagements.  They hadn’t earned anything.  They hadn’t put in the time.  They had only known each other for like 5 seconds!  Why should they get happiness and not me?

Of course I no longer feel this way.  I realized that it was a self absorbed and petty way to think.  And because the universe loves irony, I am currently engaged to a man who I have been dating less than a year.

More often, I’ve seen this way of thinking manifest itself when women announce they are pregnant.  I might have been a little bit in my own passive aggressive world when it came to how I felt about people getting engaged, but plenty of otherwise kind and good hearted women turn positively catty when they hear about someone getting pregnant who they feel doesn’t “deserve” it.  As a culture we are always happier for those couples who struggle and plan for years to have a baby than for a teenage unwed mother.  But aren’t all babies cause for celebration?  Isn’t all new life meaningful?

I think in many cases we feel this way because it makes for a better story, a happier narrative for someone’s life.  We tell ourselves, “They wanted a baby very much and they tried for years and spent so much time and money.   Then after years of heartache they finally had a baby.  It’s a miracle.”

But we are not the arbiters of someone else’s happiness.  Nor should we be.  I think we would all be a lot happier with our own lives if we stopped ascribing  value to the events in others lives.  Happiness is not a sliding scale. 

When I started dating again, I made a list of my top 5 “must haves” in a man.  One of the items on my list was an ability to be happy even if his life wasn’t exactly the way he wanted it to be.  This is a wonderful quality in a man and an even more important lesson for me to learn.  Because once I stopped trying so hard to force my life into a perfect happiness box, I learned to appreciate all the things in my life that did make me happy.

And I didn’t even need to create a vision board to do it.