Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy

Nowadays, it’s not enough to be happy—if you can be even happier. The American Dream and the pursuit of happiness have morphed from a quest for general contentment to the idea that you must be happy at all times and in every way. “I am happy,” writes Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project, a book that topped the New York Times best-seller list and that has spawned something of a national movement in happiness-seeking, “but I’m not as happy as I should be.”

How happy should she be? Rubin isn’t sure. She sounds exactly like some of my patients. She has two wonderful parents; a “tall, dark, and handsome” (and wealthy) husband she loves; two healthy, “delightful” children; a strong network of friends; a beautiful neo-Georgian mansion on the Upper East Side; a law degree from Yale; and a successful career as a freelance writer. Still, Rubin writes, she feels “dissatisfied, that something [is] missing.” So to counteract her “bouts of melancholy, insecurity, listlessness, and free-floating guilt,” she goes on a “happiness journey,” making lists and action items, buying three new magazines every Monday for a month, and obsessively organizing her closets.

At one point during her journey, Rubin admits that she still struggles, despite the charts and resolutions and yearlong effort put into being happy. “In some ways,” she writes, “I’d made myself less happy.” Then she adds, citing one of her so-called Secrets of Adulthood, “Happiness doesn’t always make you feel happy.”

(continues in The Atlantic)

	TheAtlanticEducation (@TheAtlanticEDU)
5/17/15, 7:45 PM Why the obsession with our kids’ happiness may doom them for unhappy adulthoods (ARCHIVES) theatlantic.com/magazine/archi… pic.twitter.com/ganKF1JvuF

Lifelong happiness

I've been asked to prepare a four-session (six-hour) Maymester course on happiness for the new Lifelong Learning program at our school for older (non-)students. Here's a first-go at an outline.

1. Getting acquainted, introducing ourselves, considering some prevalent notions of happiness as depicted in pop culture. "Who are you, why are you here, what's your personal definition of happiness, are you happy?"

2. Happiness in the philosophical literature and tradition, and in contemporary psychology: Aristotle, Epicurus, Montaigne, Jefferson, Schopenhauer, Mill, Russell, James, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, Martin Seligmann, Jennifer Michael Hecht...

3. Against happiness: some dissenting voices from philosophy and literature.

4. Final thoughts, and encouragement for continued post-course reflection and learning. "This I Believe": sharing our personal testimonials on the appropriate place of happiness and its pursuit in our lives, with an emphasis on the "mature" perspective. 

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UPDATE, May 28, 2015.
I've agreed to offer a Lifelong Learner's course on the Philosophy of Happiness next May, mainly for older non-traditional students... students-for-life, who've learned to value education for its own sake and not merely as a vocational credential.

I'm reminded of the way I always like to say good-bye to students at the end of every semester:

Good luck with your goals!

But I'll bet my May-mester students will already have figured out something crucial about the goal-centered and purpose-driven life:

"Whether or not we achieve our goals, in fact, is not the essential matter. We aren't going to wait until we've reached all our objectives beforew we start being happy. The path matters more than the goal: happiness. comes as we make our journey." Happiness: A Philosopher's Guide

And, as Emerson said, we must seek to "find the journey's end in every step."

Well, there will be four steps in our course: four 1.5 hour class meetings, on the first four Mondays of May 2016. Stay tuned for details.

Unhappy lawyers

Further vindication for all who chose NOT to enter the law.

Of the many rewards associated with becoming a lawyer — wealth, status, stimulating work — day-to-day happiness has never been high on the list. Perhaps, a new study suggests, that is because lawyers and law students are focusing on the wrong rewards.

Researchers who surveyed 6,200 lawyers about their jobs and health found that the factors most frequently associated with success in the legal  field, such as high income or a partner-track job at a prestigious firm, had almost zero correlation with happiness and well-being. However, lawyers in public-service jobs who made the least money, like public defenders or Legal Aid attorneys, were most likely to report being happy... (continues)