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Key points
- Pursuing happiness requires grit and determination.
- Lasting and engaging relationships are a source of happiness.
- Making small and personal positive changes increase a sense of well-being over time.
- Happiness is elusive but based on making good choices.
Pursuing happiness requires grit, resilience, determination. It’s about summoning the will to find what we need; it’s about staying motivated.
A couple of years ago, I approached the pandemic through a lens of resilience; now I’m beginning to see that capacity as basic to our existence. It’s a version of the adaptability that’s allowed our species to survive. Because happiness can be so unstable—and its loss so destabilizing—we need resilience if we are to keep it in sight. We need to be able to bounce back.
In so many instances, happy people see their sense of well-being disappear. They get old. Their spouses leave. They lose jobs that they love. Their friendships wither. But these people find workarounds, often imperfect but still okay. Happiness does not always return at the same strength or feature the same indicia. We learn to make do. As we did during the pandemic, we accept the provisional.
Even with the pandemic receding, it has been a difficult few years for happiness. So, maybe it’s an odd time to be talking up happiness. After all, do we still believe in happiness? Maybe it’s like the Tooth Fairy. But still. Maybe three cheers (maybe two?) for pursuing happiness in this radically altered, damaged world— which may take a generation to recover—can provide some perspective.
Perhaps we need to turn our focus, finally, towards how we establish lasting, engaging connections; how we find work that we love; how we stop feeling so old that we just give up. One patient told me that she still hasn’t taken off her sweat pants. Well, no time like now to get dressed, venture out . . . and, at least, try. It’s time! Some version of happiness is available, provided we discover how to pursue it.
Perhaps it’s time to start thinking on a smaller, more personal scale— not insofar as we reduce our aspirations but, rather, as we become conscious of how even small things affect our well-being. Sort of like the butterfly effect, first made famous in chaos theory (where the minutest flutter a thousand miles away can set off a hurricane). We should inhabit each moment and ask whether what we are doing and thinking will contribute to where we want to be . . . now, next week, next year.
Many of my patients have lived lives of inattention or had a blind spot regarding an aspect of their lives—e.g., a relationship or their job—a luxury that no one can afford. We should get used to agency, that is, to the idea that we are responsible for where we are headed. Of course, life takes unexpected turns. Of course, we cannot assume that we are so in-charge that we indulge in hubris. But we should be present and accounted for. We should be volitional. We should act responsibly when it comes to happiness.
We can weigh our daily decisions against our overall purpose. It helps to know where we are going. Beyond my profession as a psychiatrist, my purpose is to be a healer, to help people navigate their problems and arrive at a better (more meaningful, happier) place. It’s what motivates me. When I write about happiness, I wonder whether the project will make me happier, i.e., will it be one of those decisions that further my sense of wanting help others to become better versions of themselves? If I could not answer that question affirmatively, I might not have the motivation. But when we see where a decision is likely to take us—when we consciously think about it—we contextualize it, personalize it, and make the necessary commitment.
Naturally, we should remain flexible. Sometimes we must alter our course. Stuff happens. But if we are truly in each moment, then changing course is just one more decision. The trick is to remain informed. Remain conscious. If we have to go out of our way, rather than just zinging along like some sharpshooter’s arrow, then okay. At least we are trying to stay on top of our own situation, making good choices under the circumstances.
Happiness, as a pursuit, is a type of management. It’s not taught it in business schools, but it requires many of the same skills. You have to reshuffle priorities in multiple dimensions all at the same time. Sound hard? Well, as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said in “A Psalm of Life” (1838), “Life is real! Life is earnest.” Translation: The pursuit of happiness is not always fun.
But whoever said that it should be? It’s like the rest of our twisty, uncertain journey. In his mock-epic poem, "The Hunting of the Snark (An Agony in 8 Fits)," (1874-1876), Lewis Carroll provided one of the great universal metaphors (the Snark) for the elusiveness of the desired object (or objective):
In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away—
For the Snark was a Boojum you see.
Well, forget the intricacies of Carroll’s references (a Boojum? really?). The point is that just when the Snark appears to be mid-discourse, it vanishes. It upstages itself. If we think of life as a series of snark hunts (“an agony in 8 fits”), we get the message. The difference is that while Carroll stopped after an extended but ultimately limited series, we don’t have to. Maybe one disappointment will lead to another. But there is always another chance. Our epic, however snarky, can go on indefinitely. Or at least until we run out of some practicable rhyme scheme or reason.
