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| I have another 2019 article that came up today, this one from MEL. While I only ran across this particular piece recently, it supports what I've been saying (without much to back me up) for years: If Happiness Weren’t the Goal, We’d Have Much Better Mental Health  ‘It’s not that you’re too sad. It’s that you’re trying too hard to be happy.’ I think I phrased it differently, though, like "happiness is what happens when you're pursuing other goals." Or maybe I just came up with that. You know, 'happy' and 'happen' share a linguistic connection: they derive from Old Norse 'happ,' which meant luck or chance; we still use it that way in words like 'mishap' and 'happenstance,' and even in 'perhaps.' Etymology doesn't dictate definition, but in this case, it might give us a clue to the cognitive problem: we can do things to shape our own luck, but there's always that random element (like in yesterday's entry). Eric G. Wilson woke up one morning in 2002 and realized he wanted to die. Though he had what seemed on paper to be the perfect life — beautiful wife, newborn baby girl and professional success as a writer and academic — he was deeply depressed and debilitatingly so, a feeling that was worsened by the fact that nothing he did seemed to help. If you pursue what is, "on paper," the perfect life, that may not be aligned with your own goals. For example, having a newborn would be my personal Hell. And I thought I wanted professional success as a writer, but upon reflection, that might have constrained me in ways that would feel stifling. On the other hand, sometimes depression just hits. It 'happens,' as it were. I'm no mental health professional, so don't just take my word for it, but from personal experience, it can occur regardless of whether your life seems objectively good or bad. Luckily for him, help came in the form of a good psychotherapist whose surprisingly simple advice would alter the course of his life. “You know what your problem is?” he asked Wilson during one of their earlier sessions. “It’s not that you’re too sad. It’s that you’re trying too hard to be happy.” Consequently, I wouldn't interpret that as general advice for everyone with depression. If the shrink was as good as the author says, then presumably, they reached that conclusion after some sessions. Yeah, this is what me being skeptical about a statement I generally agree with looks like. Happiness is nice, his psychotherapist told him, but when it’s viewed as constant pleasure and fulfillment, it can be an unrealistic standard to live by. For many people, it invites failure by setting the bar at an impossible height, one that can rarely be reached for any appreciable amount of time through expected avenues like marriage, kids, professional success or material gain. And, like I said, what makes someone else happy won't necessarily make you happy. Like, I know a lot of people derive a good bit of pleasure from keeping dogs around, but for me, they're too much work, too demanding, and interrupt me with their barking. This does not mean I dislike dogs. I like them, but I know I'd be miserable taking care of them all the time. In other words, sometimes trying to be happy can make you pretty damn depressed. But if you lean into your dark parts and let go of happiness as your ultimate goal, you might actually get somewhere. And get somewhere Wilson did — this “extremely liberating” realization led him to write Against Happiness, a best-selling book which presents the unpopular opinion that striving too hard for joy and contentment can do a lot more harm than good. You know, I'm starting to be disappointed whenever one of these articles doesn't plug a book. “A lot of people don’t feel good about themselves because they have unrealistic expectations about what the good life should be,” Wilson says. “There’s this [well-documented] message that if you’re not happy, there’s something seriously wrong.” Actually, for people striving to meet the manufactured levels of glee spewed at us by social media and commercial advertising, that might be the case. Advertising is part of the problem, as I see it, which is why, while I'm not averse to ads for books in here, the whole thrust of advertising is to convince us that we're missing something, and the only way to gain some measure of satisfaction is to Buy This Product. And yes, that includes books, especially self-help books. The irony isn't lost on me. But irony often makes me happy. And although Americans spend more time and money chasing after happiness than any other country in the world, we’re still one of the most anxious and least happy of all the developed nations. And that was before, you know, *gestures at everything in general* Given that knowledge, it’s not surprising that we medicate at unprecedented rates and spend tens of billions of dollars per year buying into the products and services the commercialized self-help industry promises will make the boo-boo of sadness go away. Pretty ironic for a country that has the “pursuit of happiness” forever emblazoned into its Constitution, no? I'm not perfect by any means. I make mistakes. Demanding perfection of myself is a good way to get me to freeze up, do nothing, and end up unhappier because I missed a deadline or broke a promise. Consequently, I don't demand perfection from others, either. But, come on. That quote is from the Declaration of Independence, not the Constitution. It's not like it's an integral part of the law of the land: "You must try to be happy!" No, it was just rhetoric aimed at pissing off the King and rallying colonists. There has to be something else to live for other than the impossible dream of 24/7 glee, which Simon-Thomas stresses, is an entirely different thing than genuine happiness. After all, most of us need something to chase in order to get out of bed in the morning — otherwise, we’d just stay there and eat toast for 20 to 40 years until we die. Okay, now they're attacking me personally. Oscar Wilde, for one, believed humanity’s highest purpose had nothing to do with joy, but should instead be focused on self-expression and a gradual “intensification of personality.” Meanwhile, Buddha taught that the goal of life should be to have no goal at all; that is, you don’t necessarily need to pursue anything, you should just “be.” And if you’re Freud — who believed the world was imperfect and attaining happiness was impossible despite it being something “all humans strive for” — the highest goal you should reach for is none other than, drumroll please, sexual pleasure (for men, at least … bastard.) Really? Those are the philosophers you're going with here? Wilde, the Buddha, and Freud? Well, at the very least, we can safely dismiss anything Freud had to say. If none of those happiness alternatives work for you, there’s always Wilson’s trusty companion: melancholy. “Melancholy means acknowledging that life is mostly suffering and that perpetual happiness is rare, if not impossible,” he explains. “Accepting that helps us see that there’s no one way life ‘ought’ to be, and that we’re all just doing the best we can.” In other words, when we realize we can exist as imperfect beings whose daily lives don’t always reflect the prefabricated glitz of Instagram filters or the antiseptic cheerfulness and quick fixes marketed to us, it’s much easier to embrace the same flaws that give us so much grief. Or, and hear me out here, how about the joys of pessimism and schadenfreude? A pessimist can only be pleasantly surprised; if they're not surprised, then they were right, and that feels good, too. As for schadenfreude, no, I don't take pleasure in others' misfortune—unless I feel like they deserved it. But, you know. Melancholy works too, and has the advantage of being able to be turned into comedy. Anyway, you're better off reading the article (glaring mistakes about US founding documents aside), not paying attention to me. Like I said, not a professional. If you're seriously depressed, see one. If you're just freaked out because you think you should be happier than you are, well, maybe the article will help with that. But look out for the marketing. |
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