** Due to procrastination and poor time management, my first post relates to an article I read recently in The Atlantic, titled “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk. I’ll start reading full books sooner or later. I hope you enjoy. **
Not too long ago, I was about six months deep into unemployment, trying to figure out which direction I wanted to take my life. Having just been laid off from a job that had me feeling stressed out and unenthusiastic about the real world, it was finally time for me to review what I could do, both professionally and personally, to get my life on the right track and be “happy”. After all, the last thing I wanted to happen after I escaped corporate prison was to find myself back in some deadend job, celebrating Hawaiian Shirt Day on a Friday, wondering why the hell I didn’t take control of my life when I had the chance.
With my eyes locked on finding the keys to happiness, I started reading self-help books, biographies on people I was fascinated by, and blogs focused on philosophy and “lifestyle design”. I was set on finding the do’s and don’ts for all facets of my life, and what better place to look for the answers than in these sources? I kept on reading, but the more I read, the less authors and experts agreed, leaving me just as confused as I was when I was slaving away in my cubicle. And it wasn’t that these sources/authors/bloggers didn’t have the right answers or were wrong in what they preached (I have actually found much of what I’ve read to be very useful), but more that I was looking for a simple answer for a question that can’t be answered simply.
I find my search for the answer to happy living to be very similar to the origins of the 72 year old Grant Study, which is the main inspiration for essayist Joshua Wolf Shenk’s most recent piece in The Atlantic, titled “What Makes Us Happy?”. The study, which has been conducted out of Harvard since the late 1930’s, is “the longest-running longitudinal study of mental and physical well-being in history.” The project was started by Arlie Bock, in attempt to uncover how “normal” people can “live well”. It seems Bock’s definition of normal is a bit different than mine, seeing that the people he included in his study were all men who were educated at Harvard (eventually including several U.S. Senate candidates, and president John F. Kennedy). Although these men are far from what most people would consider “normal”, the study has proved valuable over the years.
Shenk spends a good majority of the article discussing the importance of the project’s most recent chief curator, psychiatrist George Vaillant, and how his own experiences and storytelling abilities have made the Grant Study so successful. The article also includes excerpts and letters from the study itself, which show the progression (or regression) of the men in the study until their deaths. However, going back to my quest for the key to happiness, my interests in this story come from the difference in how the study was conceived and is conducted by its two main curators.
As the creator and original curator of the study, Shenk notes that “Bock had gone looking for binary conclusions-yeses and nos, dos and dont’s. But the enduring lessons would be paradoxical, not only on the substance of the men’s lives (the most inspiring triumphs were often studies in hardships) but also with respect to method”. Bock’s search for “binary conclusions” is similar to what many people try to do in their own search for happiness. They try to find the easy answer, a step-by-step process to live life the “right” way, as if everyday life has binary answers.
Unfortunately, there are no easy answers, and Shenk points out that Vaillant understands this in an imperfect way (Shenk gives plenty of background information to explain why, which, I’ll spare you). The significance of Valliant’s perspective with the study is that he focuses on “not how much or how little trouble these men meet, but rather precisely how-and to what effect-they responded to that trouble.” The main variables in his part of the study were four “defenses” to pain, conflict, and uncertainty. These include (listed in order of worst to best):
- Psychotic (paranoia, hallucination, or megalomania)
- Immature (acting out, passive aggression, hypochondria, projection, and fantasy)
- Neurotic (intellectualization, dissociation, and repression)
- Mature (altruism, humor, anticipation, suppression, and sublimation)
According to Vaillant, the use of mature defenses is crucial in leading a happy life. As interesting as these “defenses” read, they also inherently mean that we will have to face pain, conflict, and uncertainty in order to one day lead a happy life. Since everyones life is unique, and our problems different and complex, there is no simple solution to finding happiness. Shenk writes at the end of his piece, “Only with patience and tenderness might a person surrender his barbed armor for a softer shield. Perhaps in this, I thought, lies the key to the good life-not rules to follow, nor problems to avoid, but engaged humility, an earnest acceptance of life’s pains and promises.”
Although there may not be a key to happiness, I think it’s important to think about how I’ve dealt with pain/uncertainty in the past, and how I can mature in dealing with it in the future.
Looking forward to some of your thoughts/comments.
