Happiness

This week on Radio 4’s ‘Positive Thinking’ series Sangita Myska interviewed Mo Gawdat. Mo is a former Chief Business Officer for Google X and he described his previous multi-million dollar lifestyle but also his accompanying depression. In many ways he had the life style that most could only dream of; exciting work in a big tech company, vast wealth, a family.  His depression sent him on a personal journey to try and understand happiness and to find ways of increasing it.   As an engineer he wanted to find an equation for happiness and his conclusion was that happiness is equal to or greater than the difference between your perception of life  events and your expectation of how life should  be.

This is a neat conclusion and appeals to our desire for simple answers. I think it contains a large amount of truth and as he expanded on his understanding there was much there of value. The take home message was the need to adjust your expectations in line with reality. So if you are in lockdown but spend your time resenting it and thinking you should be able to go out and do what you want, then you are likely to experience more unhappiness. If you accept the situation and find the various pleasures within it then your are more likely to be happy.

But this set me thinking rather more about happiness. Just what is it? We think we know it when we experience it, we certainly know its opposite, unhappiness. But does the one word really serve the huge variety of shades of meaning?  At its lighter ‘fluffier’ end we experience happiness when nice things happen!  Shopping for new clothes, eating a delicious meal in a restaurant, meeting friends in the pub, going to the theatre. These are all things which we have not been able to do for some time and they will bring great happiness when we can do them again.  But the happiness they bring is fleeting. It exists in the anticipation,  lasts as long as the activity and perhaps for a while after in the memory. But after a period of time the effects fade and we need another boost!  If our sense of whether we are happy of not rests just on the ability to do these activities we are not going to have a very rich experience.

Going a little deeper, we can experience a different kind of happiness when we are deeply involved in an activity.  This has been described as being in a state of flow. You can experience flow from your work when engaged in something meaningful and challenging. When in flow you forget your sense of self as your attention becomes fully absorbed in the task. Time can fly by and there is something energising about the activity. I think this is why so many people have turned to crafts during the pandemic. When you are creating something beautiful or useful which occupies hands and mind it puts you into a state of flow and brings happiness.

Our sense of self can also shift or expand when we are exposed to beauty. There are times when we might have what is described as a peak experience. These are glorious moments of deep connection. I recall watching the sunset at Wadi Rum desert in Jordan. It was so exquisitely beautiful. I sat there in bliss yet also with tears in my eyes as my husband had died only four months before. How could I be experiencing such glorious happiness at the same time as deep grief? An unexpected paradox.   Even grief itself is a deep and rich experience. You can only deeply grieve for someone you have deeply loved and the fact that you have shared all that love is a wonderful thing.

Perhaps what is so wonderful about all these deep emotions is that they remind you in a very visceral way that you are alive and I suspect that much of our quest for happiness is a quest to feel fully alive.  I think we need to constantly remind ourselves of the wonder of the fact that we are alive at all. We grow complacent to the ordinary. Life is indeed a deep mystery. Just for a moment  imagine what it would be like to see the leaves on the trees if you had been blind all your life. Imagine the joy in the taste or an orange if you had never experienced taste.  Imagine you knew you would not be alive tomorrow. How would today feel?  I can’t help but think that we need to decide to be happy each morning, even if we fail! There is no law which says we always have to feel happy. In fact we need the contrasts. But one day a morning will come which will be our last .....what might we value most then?