Is their a particular “brand” of American happiness? It sure seems so. We Americans see happiness as a right, literally and figuratively. Perhaps that why so many of us so eagerly seek out one of the countless books about how to get and stay happy whenever we feel we’re not getting a big enough, or a tasty enough, slice, of that big ol’ American pie. For many of us, lack of happiness isn’t so much a “phase” or an indication of life’s vicissitudes, as it is a clear indication that something must be horribly wrong, that something is (cruelly and unjustly) preventing us from attaining our God-given right to happiness.
in a recent New York Times Sunday Magazine, the current U.S. Poet Laureate, Charles Simic, had this to say: “It’s really frightening. People need to read a book on how to be happy? It’s completely an American thing. Can you imagine people in Naples sitting on a bus or in a trattoria reading a book about happiness?”
When asked his advice for getting happy, Simic said: “For starters, learn to cook.” Leave it to a poet to hit the nail on the head. There are many ways to interpret his answer, I suppose, but for me it says, in part, that happiness is something to be found and nurtured, often through learning, versus something simply presented to us. Too many of us too often just sit and wait for happiness to arrive all bundled up in a basket on our doorstep.
I do believe happiness can be found in books, but I’m not sure “get happy” books are your best bet. I would recommend poetry. And to best explain why, in closing, I offer this poem. By Simic, of course:
WATERMELONS
Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.
60 Minutes recently ran a segment on Denmark, which once again ranked first in the world in terms of the happiness of the population.
Morley Safer interviewed a number of Danes to determine why they thought ranked consistently as the most happiest people in the world, and particularly why they thought it might be that they were happier than Americans. Their answers basically centered upon the idea of having more realistic expectations from life, so that they were less frequently frustrated or disappointed. A piece of advice they proffered up to Americans was not to be so “preoccupied with the American Dream.” They also attributed their happiness to the amount of value they place on friendships, family, and spending time with both.
The role that meaningful relationships with family and friends plays with regard to personal happiness was validated in an interview with Tal Ben-Shahar, a professor at Harvard, who teaches a course on Positive Psychology — basically a primer for his students on how to be happier today.
Tal espouses that as a society too many of us are willing to sacrifice happiness today with the hope that we’ll be happier in the future. We’ll be happier once we get that bigger house, that bigger car, that promotion, etc.
No surprise to us here at Barefoot, but that is simply not true. You need to choose to do what makes you happy today, but importantly, not at the expense of being happy tomorrow. That would not be happiness, that would be hedonism.
A new study published recently in the journal Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that if we feel super-duper happy, we are likely not as well off as those who feel only moderately happy. The study found that those who scored their happiness as a 10 (on a 1 to 10 scale) earned less money. The uber-happy students in the study received lower grades. The researcher’s conclusion? In short, if you’re “too happy” you get lazy, you don’t work as hard, you’re not as motivated to find new ways of doing or approaching whatever that lead you to being happier. “…we need negative emotions,” is how one of the study’s authors put it. Now, no one wants to be too low on the happiness scale, but if you really think you’re perfectly happy, you may want to reconsider. For you own good, that is.
Those who read this blog know that I trade-up for books. Not only do I have a “thing” for books, I even wrote one back in 2003. It’s a childhood memoir called Running from the Devil. It’s about my 1970’s youth and some pretty big secrets I kept. It sounds kind of heavy, and in some ways it is, but the story is mostly light-hearted. Publisher’s Weekly called the book “hilarious, sad and fully absorbing.” It was also an alternative selection of the Literary Guild, and I appeared on NPR’s “The Diane Rehm Show” for a full hour. The book was a joy to write and promote (even though it never even came within shouting distance of the New York Times’ bestseller list).
One of the cool things about my book-writing experience is that Barefoot permitted me to work part-time while I wrote the book over the course of about one year in 2001. And though the book didn’t sell all that well, I have received over 500 letters and emails from strangers around the country who read the book, found something to like in it, and then took the time to write me.
And just the other day, I sold the TV and movie rights to Madison Park Pictures, a small, but very creative, award-winning production firm. Check out the trailer for their movie, “LBS.” The odds of anything coming of this option that I sold are slim, at best, but it’s still cool how a one labor of love has brought me so much happiness. Maybe, just maybe, there will be a Running from the Devil movie or TV series that will bring some joy to a few others. You can’t blame a guy for dreaming, right?
