What forest? What trees?

Forget happiness

Okay, so I was writing about 'happiness' in this blog at one time. But I couldn't sustain that. It's not that I don't believe in happiness; I do. But I believe in other things more. Though I was intrigued by that study done by Nicholas Christakis in which they put forth the idea that you can by made happy by people in your social network. (Here's page about Dr. Christakis and links to various of his studies.) Then we find out that the hacker who got into the Twitter accounts of various celebrities found 'happiness' was the password used by the Twitter staffer. As they say, "the fairly weak password, 'happiness.'" I guess no one will be using that as a password for a while.

The thing that really put the brakes on me thinking about happiness was an article in the NY Times from October, 2007 about Charles Schulz, the 'Peanuts' cartoonist. Turns out that whenever anyone asked him why Charlie Brown never got to kick the football, he replied, "Happiness is not funny."

He's right. It's not funny. For me, funny is more important than happy. Maybe it's a Scandinavian thing.

"What's the matter with the people!?"

Just like I've always told you: if you want to be happy you have to eat well and also break out into song on a regular basis. And Jack Lalanne agrees with me. (Oh, okay, so he said it first...)

But what's with sitting in the chair backwards? Doesn't that have some kind of meaning in Freudian speak?

Thanks to Shelley for the heads up.

And thanks to BoingBoing for letting Shelley know about the video.

Shopping can make you happy

Yes, you know you have that long, long day of work and at the end of it you decide you deserve a treat and so you go shopping. It may not be a big thing, might just be a new razor, or a t-shirt, but you just have to buy something. Well, that's the normal kind of shopping therapy. That's shopping from relief or perhaps happiness or perhaps for having just survived some long day.

But I now have a new kind of "shopping therapy." I had a day last week, one of those days. Maybe everything went wrong, from the newspaper being wet on the front steps to uncooperative co-workers to a bad turkey sandwich for lunch to vague and disconcerting phone calls with colleagues and other people.

So there I was at the end of a day like that and I still had to get food for dinner, so I headed over to the local Whole Foods, where I got a hand basket and picked up some potatoes, a steak, asparagus, a pineapple, cottage cheese, instant oatmeal, a ham and brie sandwich for the next day's lunch, a baguette. But people weren't getting out of my way, and someone cut me off in the line at the meat counter. The day just seemed to be getting worse.

Then I made my way to the checkout lanes, scanning the row of cashiers to see who had the shortest line. The first aisle is '8 items or less' and I know I can't go there but I'm thinking maybe I qualify for the '12 items or less' and I'm standing there in no-man's land counting the items in my basket when I happen to look up and see that the check-out woman in '8 items or less' is looking at me, looking at her empty line and extending her arm, palm up, letting me know it doesn't matter how many things there are in my basket. She smiles, I smile, and for the first time all day I feel happy, and she says, "you know, it's better to be busy" and I agree, glad to know that there's a grocery store where people are happy (she had a big smile) to break the rules to make things run more quickly and efficiently.

I thanked her profusely, asked for paper rather than plastic and was out of there in no time, happy. Happy to have saved a day at the last minute from the 'one long shitless day' to the 'wow, what a great ending' kind of day. And I still had the rest of the evening spread out before me.

Men get happier at women's expense

Article in September 26 New York Times titled "A Reversal of the Happy Index." Men, it turns out, are happier now than they were 40 years ago. Women are less happy. Seems that men are working less (that thing that makes them unhappy) and women, of course, are now working outside the home and are still working as much inside the home. Or, a little less at home. Apparently, dusting is down. (and obviously, not soon to be picked up by men.)

But I don't get the 'men working less' thing. I thought we were all working more.

Also seems that women don't enjoy spending time with their parents while men do. Because when women are with their parents, they're taking care of them; it's work. While men who spend time with their parents are probably sitting around watching football or baseball, doing nothing. Certainly not dusting together. This tendency is only going to accelerate as the boomers age and their parents age more and need more and more care.

I see it in my own family. Parents in their 80s. (Father recently deceased.) Four children: three boys, 1 girl. Daughter lives near parents and so burden of dealing with their health issues falls to her. And she's got her own family and her own career to deal with. That's a lot of stress. A lot of un-happiness.

Most troubling factoid for me is that high school girls are less happy than high school boys. One theory is that these young women are leading the charge in academics, in student government, in sports, and on top of all that they feel pressure to be 'hotties.' And the boys, well, I guess the boys are just being boys. But why are they happier than they were in 1976? Are they working less? Perhaps they're copying all the answers off the girls' papers.

At a memorial service

At a memorial service for a friend who committed suicide, his wife opened with a quote from Robert Frost: "Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length."

Me, happy?

I told a friend of mine that I was getting interested in happiness and she burst out laughing. And I guess I deserved that. It's not that I'm an unhappy guy, but you wouldn't call me bubbly. Too-happy people make me nervous—my theory is that either they're insane or overly medicated. But I got going on this topic because a friend suggested I interview Alex Kjerulf, a young Danish consultant who calls himself the Chief Happiness Officer. He blogs at a site called Positive Sharing. He's written a book (available here as either a print to order or a pdf or free online) called Happy Hour is 9 to 5. I interviewed him for the Cool Friend area at tompeters.com. I'll provide a link here when that interview gets posted.

Now it just so happened that around the time I interviewed Alex and was asking him 'what is happiness,' Tom Peters was pushing out a piece of writing called Wherefore The Impact of Superior Management Practice on Increased Human Welfare and the Pursuit of Happiness* and Excellence? What caught my eye especially here was the footnote associated with the word happiness in the title. That footnote reads: "To Aristotle eudaimonia was what the good life was all abut. The complex Greek word is usually translated as 'happiness,' but Aristotle means something else. Happiness to Aristotle is not a state but an activity. It is not lying on a beach with a glass of wine and a book, nor having wanton sex with the person of your dreams. Eudaimonia is better translated as 'flourishing,' or doing your best with what you are best at."—Charles Handy, Myself and Other More Important Matters

I really like this definition of happiness because it makes most sense for me. You've been in those situations where someone asks you if you're happy, and most of the time, just sitting there, doing whatever (eating, drinking, staring into space, daydreaming...) you're not happy. You just are. And as far as I'm concerned, that's okay. It's only when you're engaged in some project that has meaning for you that you are happy.

The Chief Happiness Officer, on the other hand, seems to be upbeat most of the time. He's got a picture of himself jumping up in the air, clicking his heels together. You've got to be pretty upbeat to have your picture taken like that. I don't think I'm happy like that. Of course, it could be the difference in our ages. Could also be genetics, since it seems that general happiness is half determined by your genes. At least according to this article from Forbes.

Given my northern European background (think Ingmar Bergman films) I'm probably not inclined to be happy. I do work at home, though, and the Forbes article suggests that a short commute can go a long ways toward making one happy.