The Problem With Happiness
We're all told to pursue happiness, but what does that even mean?
The sad hunt for happiness
Whatever you do, be happy. Or, in the words of cinema legend Audrey Hepburn:
The most important thing is to enjoy your life—to be happy—it's all that matters.
Hard to disagree with that.
The problem is that we don’t really know what it means. Ever since Aristotle slammed the words eu and daimonia together into eudaimonia (something like ‘good spirit’), philosophers and psychologists have tried to put their inquisitive finger on it.
It has proven slippery, though.
What we do (think we) know is that happiness is - to an extent - makeable, as novelist and activist Alice Walker reminds us:
Don't wait around for other people to be happy for you. Any happiness you get you've got to make yourself.
This, oddly enough, leads to another problem. Happiness becomes an individual responsibility this way, something to pursue at all costs. It is now a box to tick, an achievement to flaunt on social media.
That’s a lot of pressure; pressure that makes us unhappy.
French philosopher Albert Camus said it well:
You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.
Happiness is just a big bunch of problems.
Positive happiness
Let me do something that’s so unlike me that I’m trying not to scoff while writing this: look at the positive side.
In 1998, psychologist Martin Seligman kicked off his term as president of the American Psychological Association by outlining a research program for ‘positive psychology’. In a 2000 article with colleague Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, he defined it as follows:
A science of positive subjective experience, positive individual traits, and positive institutions promises to improve quality of life and prevent the pathologies that arise when life is barren and meaningless. The exclusive focus on pathology that has dominated so much of our discipline results in a model of the human being lacking the positive features that make life worth living.
Sounds legit.
Since then, we’ve seen a scientification (yes, that’s a word, dear spellcheck) of happiness. In its wake, a tsunami of self-help books, podcasts, and video courses promise us the key to eternal happiness. Only $9.99. What a steal!
*looks at depression and burnout numbers*
How’s that working out, huh?
While the stated aim of positive psychology is laudable, several aspects of it have received criticism. Some of these criticisms (positivity illusions, narrow focus, ignoring negativity, and toxic positivity) are phrased differently but - to me - they share a key insight: life is not all sunshine and rainbows for most people. Pretending that it is is not necessarily a good idea. There is room for negativity, even in the pursuit of happiness.
Negative happiness
Much like we have positive and negative freedom (famously articulated by Isaiah Berlin as the ability and conditions for self-determination versus freedom from being coerced; or freedom to versus freedom from), the case has been made that we can think of happiness in the same way.
Positive happiness adds. Awe, love, experience, whatever it is. Happiness is moving a little bit closer to what makes you complete, to use a cliche. (Or at least closer to the illusion of completeness, but that’s an entire newsletter in itself…)
Negative happiness avoids. Pain, suffering, heartbreak… All the things and experiences that take our mood and put it in a blender. To be happy is to be free of those.
The difference with positive psychology is that this conception of negative happiness explicitly recognizes and acknowledges negativity. Yes, as something to try to avoid, but two minuses make a plus.
Yet, this does not feel sufficient. Happiness is not only avoiding the negative, right?
Complete happiness?
This 2015 article by journalist and author Jennifer Moss has a title that speaks for itself: ‘Happiness Isn’t the Absence of Negative Feelings‘. It starts off as a defense of positive psychology, but along the way, it adds a few important points of nuance for a more complete view of happiness. For example:
…we’re not happy when we’re chasing happiness. We’re happiest when we’re not thinking about it, when we’re enjoying the present moment because we’re lost in a meaningful project, working toward a higher goal, or helping someone who needs us.
And:
Healthy positivity doesn’t mean cloaking your authentic feelings. Happiness is not the absence of suffering; it’s the ability to rebound from it. And happiness is not the same as joy or ecstasy; happiness includes contentment, well-being, and the emotional flexibility to experience a full range of emotions.
We’re getting closer.
Still not entirely there yet. Perhaps we’ll never be.
Closing thoughts:
Perhaps we don’t need to know what happiness means, we simply need to be able (to allow ourselves?) to feel it.
There is (maybe rightly so) a strong emphasis on the power of the individual to choose happiness, but none of us lives outside of society. Surely there are social and cultural factors that enable or discourage attaining a happy mind state?
Likewise, surely there are biological (physiological) factors that might make it easier/harder for some people to feel happy?
Or maybe I’m overthinking it. Maybe it’s simple. Maybe Anne Frank was right when she wrote:
Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.
Q: What makes you happy? Do you purposefully have to ‘work’ on happiness? Or are you maybe someone who has a naturally happy disposition?