Are you happy? Do you know what that means?

Thanks to Leo Charney, PW’s DVD reviewer, for sending in this link to New York magazine’s article “Some Dark Thoughts on Happiness.”

From Jennifer Senior’s exhaustive analysis of happiness studies:

Married people are happier than those who are not, while people who believe in God are happier than those who don’t. On the former point, Seligman’s book cites a 35,000-person poll from the National Opinion Research Center, in which 40 percent of married Americans described themselves as “very happy,” compared with just 24 percent of unmarried Americans who said the same. (Of course, he allows, happy people may be the ones who get married to begin with.) On the latter point, he cites a study showing that the faithful are less likely to abuse drugs, commit crimes, or to kill themselves. The act of worshipping builds community—itself another source of happiness—and belief systems provide structure, meaning, and the promise of relief from pain in this life.

Smarter people aren’t any happier, but those who drink in moderation are. Attractive people are slightly happier than unattractive people. Men aren’t happier than women, though women have more highs and more lows. Surprisingly, the young are not happier than the elderly; in fact, it’s the other way round, with older people reporting slightly higher levels of life satisfaction and fewer dark days.

Money doesn’t buy happiness—or even upgrade despair, as the playwright Richard Greenberg once wrote—once our basic needs are met. In one well-known survey, Ed Diener of the University of Illinois determined that those on the Forbes 100 list in 1995 were only slightly happier than the American public as a whole; in an even more famous study, in 1978, a group of researchers determined that 22 lottery winners were no happier than a control group (leading one of the authors, Philip Brickman, to coin the scarily precise phrase “hedonic treadmill,” the unending hunger for the next acquisition).

It’s funny that in psychiatry, the dominant question—at least for those with severe illnesses—is not whether you’re happy, but whether you’re functional. Happiness is pretty elusive. I’ll have a fleeting feeling of joy, but then it’s followed by total pessimism: “This can’t last,” I say to myself. And in fact, it doesn’t.

But the article isn’t really talking about people with mental illnesses. It’s talking primarily about generalized happiness, or contentment with one’s station in life. In that sense, I realize, I am pretty content. I like my social relationships, my family, my earrings and my job. On a basic level, what more is there? The illness is, like all illnesses, an aberration—a warping of an already pleasant life.

Knock wood.

liz | 12:26 PM | Uncategorized