Happy, Happy, Happy

In recent years, psychologists have published some interesting research on the science of happiness, which percolated down to popular books and blogs and became part of a cult of narcissism. The Times has an article on the latest pop book on happiness. The article is entitled "On Top of the Happiness Racket," and a racket it is.

Over the past few months, I've rearranged my life completely. After I get the kids on the school bus, I go to the gym and run two miles. Then I come home and plan out the day on the calendar. I use iCal and port everything to the iPhone. I shower and put on nice clothes. I do household chores and write. I'm going to sleep earlier and cooking more food. I drastically changed my life goals and lifestyle. I am probably doing a lot of the things that Rubin describes in her book.

There's also other stuff that Rubin prescribes in her book that would make me distinctly unhappy. She wants us all to do scrap booking. Scrap booking does not make me happy. I don't want to glue pictures of kitties in books. I do want to see Jeff Koons' new exhibit. That would make me happy. So, notions of happiness vary from person to person.

I do think that a lot of the happiness books and other lifestyle books about zen living and all that come out of our fucked up lifestyles, especially here in the New York city area.

This TED talk described certain cultures that produced people who live to an especially long age. The guy talked about people who lived simple lives, but did them well. They took pride in fishing or in raising children. They had lives full of movement and exercise. They had circles of family and friends that they saw regularly. They took time to eat well.

These people didn't need books on happiness. Their culture guided them to lives that not only kept them happy, but kept them healthy for a very long time.

Here, we work too many hours and are consumed with career success. We don't socialize enough. We don't spend enough time with our kids. We survive just by putting out one fire after another.

A friend just told me about a woman that she knew, an important professor at an Ivy League college, who chose to work through Thanksgiving, rather than eating turkey with her kids, because she couldn't spare the day off.

We also sit in front of a computer for too long. The TED guy talked about the importance of daily exercise. He doesn't mean the two-mile sprints at the gym followed by hours of sedentary computer time, which is what I do. He said that constant movement of gardening, walking to the supermarket, hauling laundry baskets up the stairs is what the healthy 100-year olds did. We're getting farther and farther away from that.

People need more than scrapbooking to keep them happy. They need jobs that really end at 5:00, so they can have time to glue kitties or whatever. They need low stress, flexible jobs that will pay them enough to afford housing and receive proper medical care. Quality education must exist in all towns regardless of the price of the homes.

Steve and I are back to fantasizing about getting a farm in upstate New York.

Comments

[Amy P]

"She wants us all to do scrap booking. Scrap booking does not make me happy."

Digital photobooks might be more your thing: click, click, click, done. From now on, that's what all the adults in our family are getting for Christmas. However, that doesn't fix the problem of the large box of loose photos that is sitting in my bedroom

"A friend just told me about a woman that she knew, an important professor at an Ivy League college, who chose to work through Thanksgiving, rather than eating turkey with her kids, because she couldn't spare the day off."

I bet she enjoys the work more than eating with the kids.

[Amy P]

On the subject of photo albums, I will present a conversation that took place between my husband and me over the past year.

husband: Why do you need to do a photo album?

me: So that in case of fire, I have something to tuck under my arm as I leave.

husband: In case of fire, I expect you to have a child tucked under each arm.

They're actually too big for that already, but the principal holds.

[bj]

You realize, though, that this blog has your scrapbook inside it. At least, the public part. But, the public part is what goes into a scrapbook, anyway (as opposed to a journal) since they're supposed to be for posterity.

"Scrapbooking" isn't about pasting pictures. It's about taking the time to document where you've been, where you want to go, and who you've been doing it with. My scrapbook is my family blog & my huge collection of digital photos, and I know that having it and doing it, does indeed make me happy.

I have to remind myself of the balance between documenting and being in the moment though.

Have you read Trunk's posts on how she's realized that she doesn't really want to be happy -- which she equates with content?

I have to say that perhaps the important professor is happier spending Thanksgiving working, rather than eating with her children. Because, really, by the time you're an "important" professor, you have the choice of prioritizing Thanksgiving with your children over work, if you want to. Now, if she were a physician, or the president, she might not have that choice. But a professor, well, they have the choice.

[laura]

Yeah, I read Trunk's posts on happiness. I thought about responding, but didn't. Didn't think they were post-worthy.

I suppose you're right about blogging = scrapbooking. Can't help recoiling at all scrapbooking cuteness at Michael's.

[MH]

blogging = scrapbooking

Open comments = leaving your scrapbook and a Bic on a seat at the Port Authority.

[bj]

"blogging = scrapbooking

Open comments = leaving your scrapbook and a Bic on a seat at the Port Authority."

But, Laura moderates comments. And, aren't we a bit like the local coffee shop (or book store), rather than the Port Authority? Yes, anyone could come here, but not everyone does.

[MH]

BJ, I was poking fun at my own tendencies in commenting.

[Russell Arben Fox]

We're pretty happy, these days. I don't know how Rubin would measure us. We've given up a lot of our older professional or material ambitions, but developed others in their place. We garden, ride our bikes, and maintain photo albums (actual books with actual still photographs, with the clear, flimsy plastic pages which the kids tear apart when they want to go back and look at themselves when they were two). We spend too much time on the computer, that's true. But overall, I think our lives as we move into and through our 40s have gotten happier, and better.

[bj]

I think Russell (and Laura) are doing the things that Rubin advocates (but, isn't actually doing, since instead of actually being a regular person, she's the former Supreme Court Clerk, current NYT best-selling author of a mega industry book and the daughter in law of Robert Rubin). That is, she's elite, rich, privileged, and probably very busy.

Oh, and re scrap-booking, especially via a blog, check out the NYT article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28FOB-medium-t.html

All about the use of digital media (and communication) to profile our family's lives. Interesting article, actually, that points out the darker sides of the hobby.

[af]

If you have a Facebook page, you have a scrapbook. And just like scrapbooks, it's sanitized (most of the time) because you include the happy parts and the only slightly, amusingly bad parts - not the stretches of depression or the serious problems. The pictures of happy kids and vacations and milestones, not the fights and tantrums and the crying. I think that accentuating and valuing the positive in your life is partly the goal of scrapbooking, and it's a good one, but only to a degree. (And sometimes I find looking at all the relentless happiness in other people's lives kind of exhausting.)

[laura]

The biggest problem for me with the happiness industry is that 1)people are made happy by different things, 2)people are made happy by different things at different stages at their lives, and 3)people aren't the best judge of what makes them happy.

The better goal is to live a good life -- treat other people with respect, treat your body with respect, go out of your way to help other people, get out of the house or the office as much as possible, have achievable goals, avoid people with different ethical frameworks than yourself, appreciate things of beauty, and be flexible in one's goals. The byproduct of doing these things is happiness.

Yeah, the NYT points out the hypocrisy in Rubin's book. Loved it.

re: the woman who worked rather than spending Thanksgiving with her children. I can't believe she's really happy. She's either working because she's stressed out of her mind by deadlines and rewards that she's deceived herself into thinking are important or she really loves her work more than her kids. There are people who love their job more than their kids, but they are rare. As they get older, they get really guilty and bitter. I never met anyone who's screwed over their kids and remained a happy, peaceful human being.

[Doug]

We're pretty happy, these days.

Well, after defeating the goblins, RAF, you've certainly earned it.

[Amy P]

My mental picture of RAF has always involved a leather bomber jacket and a silk scarf.

[MH]

Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Azog is the hobgoblin of giant mines.

[Russell Arben Fox]

The last three comments explain why 11D is now the new, secret, so-unhip-as-to-be-hip Unfogged of the blogsophere.

[MH]

I gave-up Unfogged for Lent, so I have a greater than usual surplus of pointlessness.

[ChrisinNY]

Re upstate NY- Come over to the dark side. We've got cookies. ;)
http://village.kinderhookny.us/index.htm

[Wendy]

"BJ, I was poking fun at my own tendencies in commenting."

FTR, MH's comments make me happy.

What makes us happy is traveling, even when we're sitting in the hotel room with the kids watching Spongebob while it pours rain outside in San Francisco. Speaking from personal experience right now, alas.