Happiness

Now we know the key to happiness. And it’s been proven.

Sound a little cynical? It's not intended; though perhaps a healthy skepticism is always appropriate.

For the longest time, scientists haven’t wanted to touch the topic of happiness. It was just too subjective, elusive, or soft a matter. But apparently over the last couple of decades, with the knowledge of which parts of the brain are responsible for the experience of happiness, and the ability to measure what goes on the head, and subjective information from enough people, the doorway to empirical study opened wide.

I can’t pretend to know much about the topic myself. Some have even called me “overly realistic”, so the notion of sustained good cheer goes right over my existential head. In fact, all I really understand about happiness in any technical sense is what I saw in a seemingly quite-credible, 2.5 hour documentary I watched a couple of nights ago.

Nowadays there is a whole lot of science on the topic. The video surveyed its breadth.

First the show looked at studies on the effects of things that we THINK will make us happy—things like money, education, travel, religion, meditation, drugs, self help. It turns out that they can help, but they don’t really make the difference in a sustained sort of way.

Then we saw the things that most of us would think would PREVENT the possibility of happiness—things like regular torture, solitary confinement, and suddenly becoming a quadriplegic. It turns out that when these things happen, they indeed set us back, but human resilience shines; even genuine victims can break out of their psychological shackles, and even if they are still physically bound by them.

So, the bad news is that the effects of the good stuff wear off, and the good news is that we usually get over the effects of the bad stuff (unless in some way we block ourselves from letting go—a whole other matter). Ultimately the human tendency to normalize things, to get used to them, tends to take us back to our natural, personal set point.

Yes, you have a natural, personal set point. Win the lottery and things get better, but only for a time. Get locked away, you’ll get used to it.

The bottom line: the only thing that can actually crank us up over our personal set point, the only thing that really works—is other people. Friendships. Just hangin’ out, playing around a bit, being together.