My Experiments in the Practice of Everyday Life

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September 7, 2006
7 Comment

I push myself to write a piece for the Wall Street Journal Online: is that happiness?

NewspapersTwo resolutions from June, the month of “Eat a peach,” are to push myself and fight my limitations. And a key way I want to push myself is to write more journalistic pieces.

For some reason, I have a real antipathy for this kind of work. Why? Partly because I hate deadlines—not because I have trouble meeting deadlines, but because I have trouble doing anything except working until I’ve completed my task. I was one of those very annoying people in college and law school who finished their papers days early; I hate the panicky feeling of running out of time. Any deadline that’s closer than three months away makes me feel hugely pressured.

Also, with that kind of writing, I feel very susceptible to attack. I imagine hordes of angry readers criticizing me, and I’m filled with anticipatory dread and defensiveness. Why? Despite my reluctance, I have written lots of journalistic pieces, and have never met with a tidal wave of disapproval. So I don’t know why I’m so bothered by that feeling.

I think the best way to overcome this feeling is to push through it. I imagine that if I did lots more journalism, my dread would dissipate.

So I’m very happy with myself that I did write a piece for the Wall Street Journal Online yesterday. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at it online until this morning, but nothing dire has happened, so I’ve relaxed a bit.

I wrote about a topic that fascinates me: the relationship between money and happiness: Money Can’t Buy Happiness? This Blogger Begs to Differ. (It may be available to subscribers only.) As I wrote in that piece, and as I’ve written in this blog, I believe that money, spent wisely, absolutely can help people achieve happiness.

Pushing myself to write that piece reminded me of a strange wrinkle in the pursuit of happiness—an effect that I think happiness researchers may be overlooking in their studies. And that’s the fact that happiness doesn’t always make you happy.

For example, one research tool to measure quality of daily life is the Day Reconstruction Method, which asks people to record the previous day’s activities and to describe their feelings about them.

But I’ve noticed that, paradoxical as it seems, happiness often makes me unhappy. I do things that make me “happy” or satisfied or fulfilled in a very deep sense, but that cause me to feel a lot of unhappiness or uneasiness or annoyance on the surface. If someone with a clipboard asked, “Are you happy?” I would say no. And yet I am happy, too.

Giving a speech. Getting a colonoscopy. Caring for a fretful, sick child. Spending time with a parent with Alzheimer’s. Taking the Series 7 exam. Are you happy doing these things—before, during, or after? Perhaps you feel relief when the chore is over. Or you feel the warm glow of having done your duty. Or maybe you shove the whole experience out of your mind as soon as possible. Is that “happiness”?

I think that it is happiness—but perhaps not the kind of happiness that shows up in the Day Reconstruction Method.

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  • Amanda Himelein

    Here’s the distinction I use:
    The happiness axis measures the type of feeling (it runs from Very Bad to Very Good)
    The joyfulness axis measures the strength of feeling (it runs from no feeling – completely numb depression, to overwhelming feeling – so much emotion you can’t contain it)
    So things that we often associate with “feeling better” may be things that increase our happiness, or may be things that increase our joy. In general, I use the laughter test: if it makes me laugh or grin, it’s increasing my happiness. If it makes me feel a deep sense of contentment with myself, it’s increasing my joy.
    In the extreme, sometimes sadness is the easiest way to pull out of depression. If you’re in a numb fog, and watching Titanic makes you cry, then you leave the movie feeling more (if not feeling better). Similarly, caring for an elderly parent doesn’t always make you feel better — it makes you cry, it makes you lonely. But it does make you feel. And that experience of your emotions, being in touch with yourself, is what creates that deeper feeling of joy.

  • Sophie

    I couldn’t see your essay at the link provided in this post (which was indeed subscriber-only) but I was able to read it here: http://www.careerjournal.com/jobhunting/change/20060906-rubin

  • ciocia

    Maybe there are different types of happiness, like there are different types of love. There is giddiness, contentment, satisfaction, pleasure (and that can be subdivided, too–sensual and erotic pleasure, pleasure with mastering a skill)etc. Maybe our idea of happiness is just too one dimensional.

  • LH2004

    Do you honestly not see the inherent emptiness of “happiness” as either a goal or a measure of success?
    Life is not about happiness. All the time, I do things that I know perfectly well won’t make me happy in the slightest. That is not because I can’t predict that these things don’t make me happy; it’s because happiness isn’t what I’m aiming for. I want many things — happiness, but also pleasure, knowledge, feelings of morality, relaxation, respect, interest, freedom, security. Happiness is correlated with those only incidentally. Are you really happier when you’re eating your favorite food? I’m probably not, but I still want that type of satisfaction. I know that I wasn’t happier when watching a movie like Schindler’s List, or Hotel Rawanda, or Glory; I strongly doubt that I was happier afterwards because of them. But they helped me understand things I wanted to understand, though the understanding isn’t always so happy.
    The best way to happiness is self-delusion. It seems to me that a good chunk of this blog is about how to practice that. Those of us trying to lead more genuinely fulfilling lives won’t be satisfied by that.
    There is suffering. It is to be accepted that there is suffering. It is accepted that there is suffering.

  • David Peterson

    Gretchen,
    Read your article in the Journal. Thought it was interesting. Bottom line – money can bring happiness because a person with more money means that person has more options in life – in essence more freedom. The options people choose to pursue may or may not lead to happiness – but that’s not money’s fault. It’s the fault of the person who spends the money.
    Keep up the good work.
    Dave

  • http://www.happiness-project.com Gretchen Rubin

    I would like to respond to you, LH2004, but I feel as if we’re using terms in different ways. I don’t understand how you can say that you are seeking “pleasure, knowledge, feelings of morality, relaxation, respect, interest, freedom, security” but that “happiness” is correlated with those only incidentally. Huh? Aren’t these the very components of happiness? And to what end do you seek them, if not to be happy? Or to make others happy? And if why do you care if other people are happy, if you don’t think it’s important to be happy yourself? I’m very eager to understand how you think this blog is about self-delusion. It may very well be–I certainly spend a lot of time on clutter and calories. But in what way do you think I’m self-deluded? I spent the month of August focusing on suffering and death. I certainly don’t deny that reality. Nor do I think that happiness=eating your favorite foods. (Though if you want to read a very convincing case for exactly that point, read Epicurus.) You don’t include love in your list. In the end, as banal as it is to say, I think that to rise up to the great challenge of love (with all that that requires of us) is the essence of happiness.

  • http://www.happiness-project.com Gretchen Rubin

    Dave — you summed it up beautifully. It’s not that money buys happiness, or can’t buy happines, but that it permits choices. And it’s the choices we make that make us happy or not. But the way you phrased that point was better!

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