If You’re Happy and You Know It

If You’re Happy and You Know It

By Charles Nelson, Ph.D.

Copyright

Copyright 2016 by Charles Nelson, Ph.D.

All rights reserved.  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review of scholarly journal.

ISBN 978-1-365-33386-6

London, Ontario, Canada

charles.nelson@sjhc.london.on.ca

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is dedicated to my father, Dick Joseph Nelson.

Special thanks to Lisa King and Felicia Ketcheson for their assistance with the editing of the manuscript.

PREFACE:

Happiness is rooted in our culture, religion, and language, and even in our national constitution. It is a defined right to some, and freedom to pursue it guides our charter of rights. Despite its foundational roots, it can be elusive, scarce, and even the source of conflict and war. If You’re Happy and You Know It examines the research on happiness against the back-drop of existential and real life crises of the protagonist as he reflects on key relations in his life as they change over time.

While psychology has taught us about cognition, behaviour, and emotion, biology has patiently evolved to propel the human organism forward in the pursuit of happiness. When we distill the key factors common in life, we soon learn that happiness is an essential driving force. Happiness propagates the human species, and our interaction with life provides the meaning. Everything else is details.

CHAPTER 1:  Flush Your Way to Happiness

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened.

-Dr. Seuss

It’s Easter, and we just celebrated with family and friends on the holiday long weekend. Lots of laughter, plenty of good food and wine, and the start of spring after a long winter in Northern Ontario.  Tuesday morning and its back to our routines, tired from the travel, yet happy for the occasion. Check my texts and there’s a message from my niece, ‘Grandpa’s had a stroke. He’s been admitted and I’m trying to find out more’. 

Stroke, really? Admitted to the hospital? My father had a stroke?

Indeed, a stroke. Our happy times celebrating Easter were officially over.

Happiness. Who’s got it? Who wants it, and perhaps more importantly, who knows when they have it? Countless riches have been lost pursing happiness, and countries have been torn apart because of it. Not merely because of ‘unhappiness’, but rather, the concept and belief of ‘happiness’ in itself as somehow being dangerous for social control. Ask China about this, and why a community of happiness-spreading Tibetans had to seek exile in India because someone there claimed that all you need is happiness and love. John Lennon sang about this and the Dalai Lama lives it. Of course, countless wars were also started because someone believed their happiness was prevented because of another’s culture and traditions. So if both happiness and unhappiness have the potential to cause war, why are so many people seeking to improve their lives by being ‘happy’?

Before we go deep into our understanding of ‘happiness’, you may first ask yourself, are you sure you want to be happy? The existentialists and communists somehow think it’s overrated. You know… existence is all you need, and in the case of our communist brothers, the power of uniting individuals in a classless society brings about true freedom. But is freedom happiness? Viktor Frankl stayed happy locked up in a concentration camp. Nelson Mandala was locked up 27 years, and then won the Nobel Peace Prize. Does merely being make one happy? Are capitalists happier? If your credit runs short pursuing the American dream won’t you become less happy? Too deep? Perhaps. But on the surface, at least for some reason, most would agree that happier is better.

So here’s what the research says… If you can somehow measure ‘happiness’, and there are many ways of measuring it, then you can tweak your experiences, or your surroundings, or your attitude, or whatever, and figure out what makes you happiest. Now pretend we had a name for ‘happiness units’. It’s strange that we don’t, given we emphasize the need for it so much, but imagine we did, and we called it ‘smilies’. So on any given day, if your average happiness is 50 smilies, and I gave you $50, would you be 10% happier? 25%? 50%? Would it last 10 minutes, 25 hours, or 50 days? I doubt it. It’s fifty bucks. Twenty-five cups of Starbucks coffee (grande size). How long will that keep you happy?  What if you don’t like coffee or if you’re rich? Will money increase your smilies? I’m not sure. Would you simply need more money? You know… if your average wealth is increased by 10% surely you will be 10% happier. Surely? Maybe, and maybe not.

Research suggests that money makes a significant difference to the poor (where basic needs are not yet met), but has a greatly diminished effect once one reaches middle class. Economist Richard Easterlin (1974) found that income boosts happiness only to a point, after which it yields no further benefit. This was coined the Easterlin paradox, and it was found to occur in a variety of countries. One study has found that among the middle class, money ceases to aid in happiness after a person makes over $75,000 a year, and people overestimate the influence of wealth by 100% (Kahneman & Deaton, 2010). This being the case, when most of us have our basic needs met, why aren’t we happy?

So money may not buy happiness, but up to a point you may feel happier if you have money beyond your basic needs. And there you have it: happiness… up to a point, past basic survival, but not past being loaded. Incidentally, you’ve all seen the stories of lottery winners followed over time, and watched with awe and disgust as after a year or so many are broke and worse off than before their windfall. So, if you’re banking on money as the source of happiness, you may need a loan.

Ask yourself, what makes me happy? Do the usual suspects call to mind… wealth, fame, recognition, love, sex, status, affiliation?  Could one make the argument for the opposite… charity, privacy, self-fulfillment, solitude, satisfaction, and individualism? Can you experience these opposites and feel differently about your happiness?   …so, I saved up for a luxury car, I bought it, and then I noticed others driving the same car, so I decided to get a more classic ride that fewer people have…  I think I am now happier?

Here’s a fairer question: when were you happy? What was going on? What caused it? What sustained it? Who was involved? Did you change as a result of the experience? Is it different now? Are you different now? Do you even take the time to consider these things? Well, psychologist Dr. Daniel Kahneman does and he’s come up with some pretty interesting findings.  For one thing, how can two people experience the same situation so differently? Going a step further, Kahneman changed up people’s experiences slightly and managed to improve their experience (Redelmeiera, Katz & Kahneman, 2003).  He did this by studying colonoscopy patients. What better way to slam the door on happiness than to have a colonoscopy. Kahneman knew the procedure wasn’t very pleasant so he applied psychological principles to the experiencing of the event and altered the response.

Kahneman noted that when we are asked to reflect on experiences, memory biases like the Peak-End effect (e.g. we mostly remember the dramatic parts of a vacation, and how it was at the end) play a large role. By adding 60 seconds to a colonoscopy procedure, he actually got participants to report the colonoscopy as more pleasant. He accomplished this by making sure that, for the extra 60 seconds, the colonoscopy instrument was not moved, since movement is associated with the most discomfort. He essentially differentiated between happiness according to the 'Experiencing Self' compared to the 'Remembering Self' (Kahneman, 2011). Thus, Kahneman was appealing to the Remembering Self's tendency to focus on the end of the experience. Such findings help explain human error in affective forecasting - people's ability to predict their future emotional states.  For instance, I’m happy now, so this must mean that I will be for quite some time, and if I’m happy now, it means what I have been doing must be somewhat enjoyable, even if it’s simply the end of an invasive medical procedure that hasn’t bothered me for the last 60 seconds. Try that on your next date.

So there you have it, happiness is based on how we remember the events in our lives. Really? Then we should all wish for amnesia for the bad stuff, and selective memory for the good stuff.  Does this actually happen? Maybe? Consider the unfortunate folks who experience a traumatic event. Some have a really hard time processing the disturbing memories and have all sorts of emotional problems because of it. Others don’t remember much at all and feel neutral toward a ‘bad’ event. Rarer still, some actually feel happiness for the growth they have learned in surviving a traumatic event. Three different responses based on the same event.

Alternatively, a seemingly positive event may also bring about positive, neutral, or negative feelings for different individuals, or among the same individual at different times. Huh? One day I’m happy I won the lottery, the next day I’m not, and even more perverse, ‘I won the lottery and I don’t care’. This too can happen. If billionaire Warren Buffet wins a million bucks, would it change his life? At 0.1% his wealth, hardly. Besides he and Bill Gates have already decided to give most of their wealth to charity. They’re convincing others too. So, I suppose it’s all relative and perhaps based on one’s expectations. If you expect something to happen and it doesn’t you’re probably headed for some disappointment. But if you expect something and it in fact happens, you may not necessarily be happier.  Case in point, I expect the Patriots to beat the Bills by a field goal. They are the favorite after all. If this happens, and I am a Patriots fan, I won’t necessarily be happier. I expected that much out of my team. If they lose, well that’s another story.

So are our expectations the culprit for hampering happiness? Perhaps. But if I expect so, then they can’t. What? Based on this bit of philosophical inquiry, expectations can only serve to keep us neutral or unhappy. They can’t make us happy, because by definition our expectations should be congruent with any given outcome. We become disappointed when the outcome falls short of the expectation. We don’t get happier because we predicted the outcome accurately. We simply nod and privately acknowledge that ‘yes, this is what I expected would happen’. The Patriots won, and while I am a fan, I expected this result. Had they lost, I would have been disappointed because I expected them to win. I have just taken happiness away from being a football fan.

How do I get happy then if expectations can lead to disappointment but not necessarily to happiness? Should I stop expecting things to happen? What would happen? Let’s see… I won’t expect a friend to call me back, I won’t expect a co-worker to do their share of the work, I won’t expect my child to do their homework, I won’t expect my government to keep taxes steady, I won’t expect to be loved, and I won’t expect that I will live any longer. Hmm? So if my friend calls back, and I like this friend, chances are I will become happy by the call. If he doesn’t call back, I won’t be disappointed because I didn’t expect him to… if someone I care about shows me some love, and I wasn’t banking on it, I’ll be happier. Makes sense, even living every day as if you are not certain you have another. Perhaps we all take these things for granted.

My dad sure doesn’t take these things for granted. He has grown despondent with the prospect of a poor prognosis and very limited functional recovery. First the driver’s license, then his home, then his independence.  Is it unreasonable to expect to not have a life-altering health emergency like a cerebrovascular stroke? Ask my father. He certainly expected to keep driving his car for many more years. He expected that he would drive less, not so much on the highway, and not so much at night, but boom, you have a stroke, and you will never drive again.

That everybody can do something, without regard to how old or young they are, rich or poor or middle class they are, how busy or not busy they are and what level skills they have. Everyone can do something. And everybody should do something. ... And if you do it, you'll be happier.

-Bill Clinton

Driving makes me happy.  I guess this is why I feel so bad for my dad.  I suppose if it were a real nuisance to have to drive I might feel differently. But I love driving. I enjoy the connection to the road and the world around you when you operate a vehicle. I have always enjoyed that phrase, ‘operate a vehicle’ -- so legal and official. When one drives to work they merely drive, almost passively, but when you operate a vehicle you take control of a machine largely over-engineered to do a rather simple task. You don’t need 300 horsepower to commute to work. You don’t need 12 speakers and 600 watts of surround sound, but anti up on the options and you can operate one hell of a stereo while driving your car.

Operating a vehicle and listening to the stereo, is that my version of happiness? Perhaps. So what makes these activities more enjoyable than cleaning the oven or plunging a toilet? Maybe there is no difference. While some activities seem less glamorous, they may also have their own inherent sources of satisfaction. Let’s play this out a bit… my wife leaves a handwritten note taped to the closed toilet lid Out of Order. She doesn’t tell me this as she thinks I’m busy, or resting, or whatever. Out of Order is discovered during a rousing pee dance. Remember, expectations are powerful things, and the moment I got in that bathroom and locked the door my bladder expected to relieve itself. Now I’m practically frantic. Who leaves a note on the toilet… in the time it would have taken to find some paper, a pen, some tape, and then write the note, the toilet could have been plunged…

Let’s take a peek... My God! An alien gave birth in this toilet. The young creature then must have gotten tangled up in a cloak of toilet paper. Poor thing, it gave up and its only vindication is to not go easily into the night… or down the drain as the case may be.

So here we are face to face with the unflushable. The best laid plan of attack won’t stop the inevitable… I’m not successful and the whole mess over-flows. Contaminants flowing ever so closely to the bath mat. Flirting and taunting with the carpet. Pee dance all you like, the flow is relentless, mocking my bladder with its slow rising tide and breach over the white ceramic dam. The alien-baby rises as if re-energized by the circulating current. It’s only milliliters away from freedom. Plunge. Dance. Plunge some more. Come on, you must stay in the toilet! You must go down the drain! A voice from the door, Honey, is everything okay in there? Good God, paper, a pen, and some tape… are you kidding?

But alas, a miracle! Moses has waved his holy scepter. The sea has been parted. The breach has been contained, and the evil alien has given up, exhausted from the fight, broken up and dispersed back to its terrestrial constituents. Down the drain, forever.

I feel strangely satisfied. The lengthy stream into the commode verifies this, and the dance stops. The colour returns to my face and I breathe. I feel happy.

Recognizing our shared humanity and our biological nature as beings whose happiness is dependent on others, we learn to open our hearts, and in so doing we gain a sense of purpose and a sense of connection with those around us.

-The Dalai Lama

REFERENCES

Easterlin, A. (1974). Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? In P.A. David & M.W. Reder (Eds.), Nations and Households in Economic Growth: E Essays in Honour of Moses Abramovitz. New York, NY: Academic Press, Inc.

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking Fast and Slow. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Kahneman, D., & Deaton, A. (2010). High income improves evaluation of life but not emotional well-being. PNAS, 107, 16489-16493.

Redelmeiera, D. A, Katz, J., & Kahneman, D. (2003). Memories of colonoscopy: A randomized trial. Pain, 104, 187-194.

CHAPTER 2:  Adopt a Puppy and Risk Your Happiness

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

-Ernest Hemingway

Ignorance is bliss. Bliss sounds pretty happy to me, but how come? My lack of awareness makes me happy? If I don’t know about the dangers in the world am I happier? Sounds pretty risky to me.  I suppose as long as we have others to watch over us, and take care of us, and protect us from danger, we could be pretty happy. As long as we don’t get sick of that, too. But there’s a goodly amount of danger out there, and unless we have 24-hour attendant care, something dangerous might happen. Case in point, say you like animals. They’re kinda like people but furrier, and often more amusing. So, I’m naïve to the dangers of animals and I decide to adopt a puppy.

I’ll get a black lab because like most young animals they’re especially cute. With pets come responsibility, and I’m not oblivious to the fact that care and maintenance will be necessary, and this will detract slightly from my overall positive experience with the animal, but com’on look how adorable he is.

So we’re home now, and me and poochie are getting acquainted. It fills me with joy how he follows me and stumbles over household objects as he navigates the living room. He plays, eats, gets tired, and sleeps close to me. He prefers it this way. I am his dad. He listens, misbehaves, acts silly, yelps, barks, and yawns. We grow closer and I look forward to seeing him when we’re apart.

Sounds pretty good. Poochie depends on me for basic care, and in return I feel good when we interact. So here comes the danger part… I feel good when we interact. We can’t always interact, and there will come a time when we can no longer interact. I will likely outlive my black lab, and then what will happen? I was ignorant to the dangers of attachment, and ‘bliss’ will be replaced with extreme sadness when are no longer together.

Can attachment with others bring happiness? Do the benefits inherent in connecting deeply with another outweigh the risks? I get sad thinking about my dog dying, and now I’m supposed to pony up to decades of intimate love with the same person? Well, for a lot of people this seems true. Most people choose to seek a romantic partner in their life. They fuss with their appearance, date, date some more, and fall in love. Love. What could sound happier than love? How about a broken heart? What about the commitment? Half of marriages end in divorce. How painful and expensive are they?

But people get hooked up all the time regardless of the risks. Maybe love is bigger than the risks. If you’ve been pierced by cupid’s arrow can you really turn on your rational brain and out think love? Evolutionary psychologist Robin Dunbar, a professor at Oxford University argues we tend to get dumber by romantic love (Dunbar, 2012). His theory evolved after analyzing several experiments that involved showing subjects pictures of the one they loved and recording which parts of the brain activate* and which shut down. The result was that showing photographs of one’s lover turns off the parts of our brain associated with logic and rational thought. So maybe ignorance is bliss, at least as much as having our higher level cognition sabotaged by lovey-dovey stuff is a real phenomenon.

So love within an intimate relationship makes us happier, or does it? A little more research obfuscates the seemingly obvious. Men live longer, have better health outcomes, and report being happier when they live within a committed marriage. Women, not so much. A survey of men taken by the Chicago Sun-Times showed 78 percent of men would remarry their wives; another survey by Women’s Day Magazine showed only half of women would choose to remarry their husbands (Marriage Gems, 2011).

One study tracking 1,000 couples for 15 years found that marriage brought only a tiny blip of happiness during the brief time closest to the wedding ceremony. But on average, afterwards, people go back to the way they were before. The researcher's perspective is that we each have a baseline of happiness, and marriage on average isn't going to change that -- except for that little blip, psychologist Dr. Bella DePaulo says (in Davis, 2005). Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers' seminal University of Pennsylvania study The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness found that marital happiness has declined for both men and women over the last 35 years (Stevenson & Wolfers, 2009) and as psychologist Dr. Gregory M. Herek noted, dissatisfaction not only affects spouses' emotional wellbeing but can also cause negative health effects (in Davis, 2005).

So is it wise to allow yourself to fall in love? Maybe, and perhaps only if you do it intelligently, or if you’re really lucky. Luck is tricky to control, but selecting a life-mate smartly has its rewards. While there are no guarantees, there are probably minimal criteria that should be considered to optimize one’s chances of truly finding happiness while succeeding at marriage. Some research suggests that there’s something to be said for the traditional marriage. University of Virginia sociologists Bradford Wilcox and the late Steven Nock found that the happiness of woman within a marriage is best predicated on a husband’s emotional engagement, fairness, having a breadwinning husband, being committed to the marriage, staying at home, sharing religious activities, and having traditional gender attitudes (Wilcox & Nock, 2006). Sounds old fashioned doesn’t it, but it makes sense.

Modern pressures to be all things to all people challenge women’s contentment with traditional marriages. Not only are you expected to get married, raise a family and be a wonderful loving wife, but you should also be a career-oriented financial contributor and an independent-oriented person who models this to her children. Happiness can be a tough commodity when you can’t hit on all these social expectations all the time… you got the education, the career, the husband , and the family, and now you should excel at each of these all time, and you will be happy. The cognitive psychologists refer to this as ‘shoulding all over yourself’, and for good reason.

So is that it, have we come to expect too much of ourselves? There’s that ‘expect’ word again, messing with our happiness. Clearly we should have some expectations, some standards, some goals, or shouldn’t we? What if these things didn’t matter as much? Is it even possible? Would we be happier?

Given to expect less, we experience more. When we experience more, we are more open to the possibility of happiness.  Sounds cryptic, but elegance has its virtue when you consider happiness. Simpler can be better, and maybe we forgot how to notice the simple act of experiencing life.

Consider a child. They’re like small people only happier. Notice an infant or toddler