The Pursuit of Happiness

Is that even something we should be doing?

Fourteen years ago today. Looking slightly like a Dutch masters painting.

Today, Rafael and I are celebrating our 14th anniversary. According to various studies, the fact that we’re married should mean that we’re happier than if we were single. This is apparently a truth so universally acknowledged that the subtitle of this recent article in The Atlantic is “Why are married people happier than the rest of us?” Not “Are married people happier than the rest of us?”

What’s happening with happiness in the U.S.?

The article links to some studies to back up its claim, yet when I clicked on the links I wasn’t convinced. It’s unclear whether marriage causes happiness or whether happy people tend to marry and to stay married. Also, there are significant differences in happiness levels among married couples. And the correlation between happiness and marriage (versus cohabitation) seems to be greater in collectivist societies than in individualist ones.

Can we even measure something as subjective as happiness? If so, can we attribute a causal relationship to these findings?

The Atlantic article itself questions this, quoting an expert who points out that “Most of the research indicates that the happiest couples marry, not that marriage causes happiness.”

As we know, correlation does not imply causation. But some studies seem to ignore that. The article leads with a chart from a study by Sam Peltzman at the University of Chicago, showing a marked decline in American happiness levels from 1972 to 2018, particularly in this century:

Mod-looking chart from “The Socio Political Demography of Happiness” by Sam Peltzman. Sample mean (22.34) shown as horizontal line.

Peltzman tried to account for this decline by looking at all kinds of demographic data, such as income, education level, race, location, age, and gender. He concluded, “This happiness dip is mainly attributable to one thing: Married people are happier, and Americans aren’t getting married as much.”

Again, correlation does not imply causation.

We might need to look beyond demographics to understand American unhappiness. So much has changed between 1972 and current times. I’m not just talking about covid, the potential collapse of our democracy, and the climate emergency. Even without those, life has been getting tougher for Americans. There’s the ever-widening income gap. There’s the housing shortage. There’s the health care crisis.

To top it all off, we’re experiencing increasing social isolation. This goes far beyond whether or not we’re married. It’s about the lack of community that we’re all grappling with. Some think this isolation is at the root of addiction, another growing problem in the U.S.

It seems to me that Americans have plenty of reasons to be less happy these days, regardless of their marital status. It seems misguided to assume that because marriage rates and happiness have both declined, one decline has caused the other.

Can we measure happiness?

I take studies of happiness with a grain of salt even if they don’t arrive at conclusions like this one, because happiness is subjective and hard to quantify.

That doesn’t mean it hasn’t been tried, and I do believe happiness is worth studying. Positive psychology has the laudable goal of helping people get the most out of their lives. Before this branch of psychology emerged, the field had been focused on problems and illnesses; positive psychology shifted that focus in an attempt to support anyone who wanted to be happier. Who doesn’t want that?

Martin Seligman, considered the father of positive psychology, set out to find a way to measure people’s happiness. He and his colleagues figured that if you wanted to increase your satisfaction with life, it would help to know where you were starting from and to have a way to measure progress. They designed the Authentic Happiness Inventory, which can be used to measure changes in happiness before and after positive psychology interventions.

It’s likely a useful tool. Yet happiness is as elusive to quantify as it is to pursue.

The elusive nature of happiness

But pursue it we do. The pursuit of happiness is considered so fundamental that it holds an elevated position in our Declaration of Independence, along with life and liberty — all of them considered to be unalienable rights handed down to us from on high.

It makes sense to pursue happiness — doesn’t it?

Maybe not. Various studies of happiness suggest that the pursuit itself can be detrimental to our happiness. A 2011 study found that “the more people report valuing happiness, the more likely they are to feel lonely.” Two 2022 studies conducted in Japan found that “excessively valuing happiness” made people “more likely to dwell excessively on negative feelings of distress.” Other studies have found that social pressure to be happy negatively affects people’s well-being.

Yet Americans keep pursuing happiness. In 2021, we spent an estimated $10.4 billion on the “self-help industrial complex.” Despite this, we’re no happier — instead, we’re less happy.

Why is this? Of course, we’re living in distressing times. But it’s not just that. Part of the answer lies in the seeking. When we look for happiness, we’re looking to the future rather than living in the present.

Another part of the answer lies in a misunderstanding of happiness. Our hedonistic culture can lead us to believe that to be happy we must engage in pleasure seeking, but real happiness comes from a deeper source. That’s not to say pleasure is bad — I, for one, am all for it, and I often seek it. But happiness has more to do with social connection, acceptance, and appreciating whatever we’re experiencing in the moment. It can be reached more easily by experiencing (though not wallowing in) our negative emotions than by pushing them aside. It doesn’t respond well to grasping or attachment.

I know, that’s all easier said than done. But it’s worth a try, isn’t it?

The real key to happiness, some say, is wanting what you have. I keep thinking of It’s a Wonderful Life and George Bailey’s frustration with his life, manifested in his anger about his drafty house and its broken knob at the bottom of the staircase. Once he’s realized how precious his life is, he literally kisses the broken knob (though why he’s never fixed it, I still don’t understand! 🤣).

We all have some version of the broken knob in our lives. Some of the knobs are bigger, some are smaller. Whatever our knobs, we can try looking at them from a different perspective. We can try to want what we have. Maybe we’ll find that happiness comes to us — turning up when we least expect it.

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No one puts it better than the poet Jane Kenyon:

Happiness
Jane Kenyon

There’s just no accounting for happiness,
or the way it turns up like a prodigal
who comes back to the dust at your feet
having squandered a fortune far away.

And how can you not forgive?
You make a feast in honor of what
was lost, and take from its place the finest
garment, which you saved for an occasion
you could not imagine, and you weep night and day
to know that you were not abandoned,
that happiness saved its most extreme form
for you alone.

No, happiness is the uncle you never
knew about, who flies a single-engine plane
onto the grassy landing strip, hitchhikes
into town, and inquires at every door
until he finds you asleep midafternoon
as you so often are during the unmerciful
hours of your despair.

It comes to the monk in his cell.
It comes to the woman sweeping the street
with a birch broom, to the child
whose mother has passed out from drink.
It comes to the lover, to the dog chewing
a sock, to the pusher, to the basketmaker,
and to the clerk stacking cans of carrots
in the night.
       It even comes to the boulder
in the perpetual shade of pine barrens,
to rain falling on the open sea,
to the wineglass, weary of holding wine.