Damn Asha. This is fantastic and SO in line with what I'm thinking about these days. Another book that addresses this question is the Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. My take away from that book is that "happiness" is of the body and ego; and it's externally driven. "Joy" is spiritual, internally driven, and is the inner contentment that can exist even when your world is horrid (like you've been exiled from your homeland for your whole like or you've battled apartheid). Joy may or may not let you FEEL happy, but it is what keeps you grounded and whole through the cluster fuck that is our world and our lives. Having just come through the hardest, darkest year of my life, I'm hanging on to the 3D printer layers of joy that I can work on even when happiness is far away.
Thanks for that book reminder! I started it a while back, and then got distracted and never finished it. I'll have to cycle it back onto the TBR pile. <3
Such a brilliant essay! So much to get one's head around. You ask what those outside the think about the "pursuit of happiness" line in your constitution. Well, to start with, I think you're lucky to have a constitution. Here in the UK, we have a motley collection of customs, precedents and pageantry that we try to organise ourselves by. One of the effects is to have someone called Charles Windsor calling himself our "king", so you can tell how that's going... As for the pursuit of happiness, I loved your exploration of it at a personal level. When I look at what happens when powerful nations, etc, pursue their desires (British Empire, US, Russia, etc), it seems to involve trampling on someone else's happiness or well-being. I want to call this the hedonism of imperialism. I wonder what a kinder pursuit of happness at international level would look like?
I had a sleep on this (always useful) and, for all its many faults, I do think the idea of pluralistic democracy, of all the systems ever attempted on a mass scale, does have the best chance of bringing happiness to entire nations. I think the thing that so often gets in the way in the United States is rabid individualism. Those countries that have found some balance between community obligation and individual need (the socialist democratic countries of Scandanavia, for instance) so a good job of that balance. But they are also small, comparatively, and relatively homogenous racially and culturally. The only thing that I've seen that truly overcomes the discomfort of widespread difference/diversity in people is spirituality. People have to believe that there is something higher than themselves and of intrinsic value in other people regardless of who they are, and that both those things tie everyone together.
Has that ever existed on a grand scale? I don't know. I know that in countries outside of Scandanavia that get really high "happiness" scores, like Bhutan, people lead deeply spiritual and religious lives generally. But, again, those countries are relatively small and homogenous.
You've traveled widely and lived internationally for a long time, Jeffrey. At least on a national level, have you experienced any countries that you feel like are on the right track?
Wow, that's an amazing reflection on the topic. I agree people need to believe that there is value in community, intrinsic value in other people, as you say. Your question is something I might want to pick up in a post, it's such a good and also challenging one. I don't pretend to be a political scientist. But I'd venture to say that no one has all the answers. I've chosen to live in Japan in part because it seems to me to have more answers to these questions than most, but you can't just transpose things that work in one place hoping they will work in another. Societies are complex systems and you can't reduce them to one or two elements.
I honestly don't know what the answer is. I feel like I know a lot about repair on an international level. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has written beautifully about this:
Certainly repair is part of eudaimonic well-being on an international level, but I don't know where joy or positive connection comes in. It flies in the face of tribalism and war, which is easier for us as a species. I choose to believe that it's possible, but I don't know what it looks like.
Love this, and I couldn't agree more — including about the Oxford comma! Plus, it turns out that pursuing happiness may actually be detrimental to our happiness: https://flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-pursuit-of-happiness. And thank you for calling out the focus on "self-care." It's driving me nuts how instead of changing our highly flawed system, which is making people more isolated and unhappy, we're supposed to take bubble baths. I'm all for relaxation and hedonistic pleasure, but that's not happiness, and using self-care to fix our problems is like putting a bandaid on a broken bone. Let's fix the cause, not the symptom! That may require an understanding of authentic happiness and life satisfaction.
This is really tapping into something important, quite applicable, to our post-COVID flailing as a society. I love the concept of thick happiness. The place I struggle to navigate is the fact that, being raised in fundamental christianity, where we were raised to focus on a life of service, that also translated into a life of dissociating from pain (and its messages).
In my 20s, newly liberated, I was like, hey I’m tired of feeling awful ALL THE TIME. Which I tied back to the theology and corruption/abuse of my home and college churches. But I think my understanding of our family dynamic (keep working and serving and NEVER acknowledge pain or seek a remedy for it) has expanded into systemic rejection of neurodiverse populations.
My parents normalize themselves (as best they can). I was taught to normalize and internalize pain. And so I’ve never felt entitled to happiness, but I do know I get caught around the idea that I’d like to just not be overwhelmed and miserable all the time. Just last week I told my husband “I’m not sure I know what contentment looks like. I’d like to. But I feel like I am always fighting just for neutrality inside myself. What is enough? What is too much to ask for?”
Thanks for this, Asha. I’ll be simmering on it for a while.
I think there's a lot to be said for the Buddhist notion of inevitable suffering versus unnecessary suffering. As in, being here, in these finite bodies that sicken and die, navigating relationship with other people who are, like us, struggling with fear and pain and anxiety and grief and ego inevitably brings suffering. There's no getting out of all of that. But there are ways that we invite or increase suffering that are unnecessary. That aren't baked in. And some of that comes, systemically, from the ways that we marginalize people. And some of that comes from how we internally, systemically, marginalize parts of ourselves. We get spun up in our egos and mistake them for the entirety of who we are. So many ways! But it occurs to me that distinction might be of use?
I think while I intellectually hold all these distinctions, they do operate in a siloed fashion. And they argue and compete for a “landing place.” It will probably be a lifelong project. I get a lot of comfort from the acceptance of suffering and the cessation of suffering in Buddhism. That it’s inevitable and there are ways to work with it, release the pressure. I would love to hear how others work practically with their suffering and figure out how much is too much, when is it time for a change to help things get a little easier ...
Great article. A movie I saw last night on netflix was about the blue zones . Talking about where in the world people live longest and why. It seemed to speak clearly to the happiness topic. The eudaimonic sort, I think. Good word, by the way. Why would one want to live that long unless some form of happiness were available? And it even talks about how that might be allowed or encouraged to be present in one's life. In one's community.
Damn Asha. This is fantastic and SO in line with what I'm thinking about these days. Another book that addresses this question is the Book of Joy by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. My take away from that book is that "happiness" is of the body and ego; and it's externally driven. "Joy" is spiritual, internally driven, and is the inner contentment that can exist even when your world is horrid (like you've been exiled from your homeland for your whole like or you've battled apartheid). Joy may or may not let you FEEL happy, but it is what keeps you grounded and whole through the cluster fuck that is our world and our lives. Having just come through the hardest, darkest year of my life, I'm hanging on to the 3D printer layers of joy that I can work on even when happiness is far away.
Thanks for that book reminder! I started it a while back, and then got distracted and never finished it. I'll have to cycle it back onto the TBR pile. <3
Such a brilliant essay! So much to get one's head around. You ask what those outside the think about the "pursuit of happiness" line in your constitution. Well, to start with, I think you're lucky to have a constitution. Here in the UK, we have a motley collection of customs, precedents and pageantry that we try to organise ourselves by. One of the effects is to have someone called Charles Windsor calling himself our "king", so you can tell how that's going... As for the pursuit of happiness, I loved your exploration of it at a personal level. When I look at what happens when powerful nations, etc, pursue their desires (British Empire, US, Russia, etc), it seems to involve trampling on someone else's happiness or well-being. I want to call this the hedonism of imperialism. I wonder what a kinder pursuit of happness at international level would look like?
I had a sleep on this (always useful) and, for all its many faults, I do think the idea of pluralistic democracy, of all the systems ever attempted on a mass scale, does have the best chance of bringing happiness to entire nations. I think the thing that so often gets in the way in the United States is rabid individualism. Those countries that have found some balance between community obligation and individual need (the socialist democratic countries of Scandanavia, for instance) so a good job of that balance. But they are also small, comparatively, and relatively homogenous racially and culturally. The only thing that I've seen that truly overcomes the discomfort of widespread difference/diversity in people is spirituality. People have to believe that there is something higher than themselves and of intrinsic value in other people regardless of who they are, and that both those things tie everyone together.
Has that ever existed on a grand scale? I don't know. I know that in countries outside of Scandanavia that get really high "happiness" scores, like Bhutan, people lead deeply spiritual and religious lives generally. But, again, those countries are relatively small and homogenous.
You've traveled widely and lived internationally for a long time, Jeffrey. At least on a national level, have you experienced any countries that you feel like are on the right track?
Wow, that's an amazing reflection on the topic. I agree people need to believe that there is value in community, intrinsic value in other people, as you say. Your question is something I might want to pick up in a post, it's such a good and also challenging one. I don't pretend to be a political scientist. But I'd venture to say that no one has all the answers. I've chosen to live in Japan in part because it seems to me to have more answers to these questions than most, but you can't just transpose things that work in one place hoping they will work in another. Societies are complex systems and you can't reduce them to one or two elements.
So perhaps I'll come back to this kind of issue in a post, as a way of working out my thinking. In the meantime, a book I recently read has changed my perspective on a lot of these issues: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/oct/18/the-dawn-of-everything-a-new-history-of-humanity-by-david-graeber-and-david-wengrow-review-have-we-got-our-ancestors-wrong I can thoroughly recommend it!
Thank you for raising these questions!
I honestly don't know what the answer is. I feel like I know a lot about repair on an international level. Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg has written beautifully about this:
https://ashasanaker.substack.com/p/sht-to-help-you-show-up-january-20
Certainly repair is part of eudaimonic well-being on an international level, but I don't know where joy or positive connection comes in. It flies in the face of tribalism and war, which is easier for us as a species. I choose to believe that it's possible, but I don't know what it looks like.
Love this, and I couldn't agree more — including about the Oxford comma! Plus, it turns out that pursuing happiness may actually be detrimental to our happiness: https://flowerchild.substack.com/p/the-pursuit-of-happiness. And thank you for calling out the focus on "self-care." It's driving me nuts how instead of changing our highly flawed system, which is making people more isolated and unhappy, we're supposed to take bubble baths. I'm all for relaxation and hedonistic pleasure, but that's not happiness, and using self-care to fix our problems is like putting a bandaid on a broken bone. Let's fix the cause, not the symptom! That may require an understanding of authentic happiness and life satisfaction.
This is really tapping into something important, quite applicable, to our post-COVID flailing as a society. I love the concept of thick happiness. The place I struggle to navigate is the fact that, being raised in fundamental christianity, where we were raised to focus on a life of service, that also translated into a life of dissociating from pain (and its messages).
In my 20s, newly liberated, I was like, hey I’m tired of feeling awful ALL THE TIME. Which I tied back to the theology and corruption/abuse of my home and college churches. But I think my understanding of our family dynamic (keep working and serving and NEVER acknowledge pain or seek a remedy for it) has expanded into systemic rejection of neurodiverse populations.
My parents normalize themselves (as best they can). I was taught to normalize and internalize pain. And so I’ve never felt entitled to happiness, but I do know I get caught around the idea that I’d like to just not be overwhelmed and miserable all the time. Just last week I told my husband “I’m not sure I know what contentment looks like. I’d like to. But I feel like I am always fighting just for neutrality inside myself. What is enough? What is too much to ask for?”
Thanks for this, Asha. I’ll be simmering on it for a while.
I think there's a lot to be said for the Buddhist notion of inevitable suffering versus unnecessary suffering. As in, being here, in these finite bodies that sicken and die, navigating relationship with other people who are, like us, struggling with fear and pain and anxiety and grief and ego inevitably brings suffering. There's no getting out of all of that. But there are ways that we invite or increase suffering that are unnecessary. That aren't baked in. And some of that comes, systemically, from the ways that we marginalize people. And some of that comes from how we internally, systemically, marginalize parts of ourselves. We get spun up in our egos and mistake them for the entirety of who we are. So many ways! But it occurs to me that distinction might be of use?
I think while I intellectually hold all these distinctions, they do operate in a siloed fashion. And they argue and compete for a “landing place.” It will probably be a lifelong project. I get a lot of comfort from the acceptance of suffering and the cessation of suffering in Buddhism. That it’s inevitable and there are ways to work with it, release the pressure. I would love to hear how others work practically with their suffering and figure out how much is too much, when is it time for a change to help things get a little easier ...
Appreciate you, Asha.
Great article. A movie I saw last night on netflix was about the blue zones . Talking about where in the world people live longest and why. It seemed to speak clearly to the happiness topic. The eudaimonic sort, I think. Good word, by the way. Why would one want to live that long unless some form of happiness were available? And it even talks about how that might be allowed or encouraged to be present in one's life. In one's community.
Thanks, Asha!
Louise
I really enjoyed that series! I agree, they did discuss eudaimonic happiness beautifully. ❤️
I have had to open my tablet to take notes for my response.
I like the concept of thick happiness,
Layering, assimilating past experiences
I have previously noted that people don't have long tails for balance, we use past experiences.
I resonate largely with Janette Winterson's take.
Rabid individualism?
Respectful individualism,
Largely self reliance.
Suffering? Respectful self care. Tails again. But don't sweat the small stuff, save it for the big stuff
All things in moderstion.
First respect yourself, then respect others.
I think loosely of myself as a Zen/Methodist.
Be well today and tomorrow.
RE: Photo by Timothy Dykes on Unsplash
I've seen that look before... On a crocodile 😱