Tag: being happy

Keyword: HAPPINESS | Women’s happiness

It is generally believed that happiness for women is to get married. Or better yet, to fall in love and then get married. This usually means that single women are miserable and are desperately looking for a man to love them. However, many married women (or not married, but in love with a man) are miserable and some single women are very happy with their lives and have no plans of changing such a status. Against this fact, the argument is invariably the same: happy single women are just pretending they are happy; deep inside they are eager to find someone to love them. So, no matter where the conversation begins, it always ends in the same place. It’s exhausting, really. Obviously, this question doesn’t apply to men. In fact, single men are often seen as people who are enjoying life, who are free and careless, especially the successful and rich ones. Apparently, they have no need for love. They can have all the women they want and that’s good enough for them. Only women have a (pathological) need for it, it seems.

Instead of considering that happiness is different for women and men, maybe we should consider that happiness is just different from person to person, regardless of being a man or a woman. Some people need to be loved to be happy and some people are happy with their jobs. Some people want to have children and others don’t. Some people want to get married and others don’t. Some people love to travel and change scenery every chance they get, others like to stay put, maybe having a holiday home. All this, regardless of being a woman or a man.

Happiness is when what it should be equals the reality of what is. In other words, it’s when everything goes well. This is different from those situations when apparently all goes well, but you have a feeling that something is wrong. We tend to ignore that feeling because rationally we think we shouldn’t feel like that. We live as there is a guide on how to live and how to be happy. And now there are apps that set goals for us and tell us how to achieve those goals. Instead of actually living life as it is, we spent our time trying to live the life we are supposed to live.

This is not just in our personal life, but also in our professional life. Especially now, with Chief Happiness Officers controlling people’s “well-being”. They make sure workers are feeling excited about the projects they are involved in, they enjoy the food and drinks provided for free by the employer, they go to office parties and don’t miss the team building workshops, the mindfulness sessions, and the sports events organised by the company. In some organisations, like Google, they even have a playground so people can relax during office hours and have fun. “Fun” is the key word. People are forced to have fun everywhere, smile all the time and show enthusiasm about everything. It’s stressful and exhausting.

Then, in their (rare) spare time, people are almost forced to show themselves having fun on social media: dinners with friends, idyllic weekends with lovers, luxurious holidays abroad. Besides, buying expensive objects is perceived as highlights of happiness. Every day, we are bombarded by ways of spending money and wealthy people are seen as examples to follow. Therefore, the plan is: getting a highly paid job in order to have enough money to spend it on all the things mentioned. Relationships with other people are like products to be consumed or theatrical stages to show off one’s wealth. Being admired is mistaken for being happy.

Expectations are also at the root of happiness (or unhappiness). We create many expectations about our lives, our jobs, our families, our friends. Partly, these expectations come from the “guide” about how to live and what to buy. Adverts show happy families (or happy young people) buying stuff and living in luxury as saying: “this is the happy life; this is your goal”. The expectation is, thus, if we buy that product, it will make us happy just like those people in the adverts. Experiences are the next level of this idea. It is not enough to buy a car; we now need to buy an adventurous car. It is not enough to go to the gym; we need to pay a personal trainer and sign up in triathlon and marathon events. It is not enough to travel abroad; we need to go to an exotic country and have an adventure. Always something more, always more exclusive, always more expensive.

For women, additional pressure comes from the expectation to become mothers. Drama can set in when women who want children have trouble getting pregnant. Fertility treatments, which are presented as an alternative, are painful, expensive, and draining. Draining for women and draining for their husbands or partners. And can drag on for years; more than one treatment may be needed. When they finally become mothers, the pressure is on for them to be “perfect moms”, whatever that means. They are considered “lucky” if they have the help of their husbands or partners, but still the responsibility on their shoulders is enormous.

All in the name of happiness. Is it worth it? Perhaps. Some people do find happiness in the middle of this chaos. Others just pretend (following the motto “fake it until you make it”). The truth is there are no rules to be happy. We made up rules to deceive ourselves or to help us cope with sadness and suffering. Thinking positive has its benefits, but, if its main objective is to ignore negative feelings, then it can be pointless. “Bad” feelings need to be felt alongside the “good” feelings. That’s how we see the difference. Sometimes they are intertwined. As the saying goes: «good things can come from bad situations». And vice-versa.

 

Keyword: HAPPINESS | The meaning of happiness

In the early 1990’s, after graduating, Christopher McCandless rejected society, gave his money away, and went to live in nature from what nature could provide. He wanted to be happy and isolated himself to go and look for it. Jon Krakauer wrote his story in the book “Into the Wild”, which was adapted to cinema by Sean Penn. Sadly, Christopher was found dead four months after he had settled in an abandoned bus in the middle of Alaska wilderness. He died alone. At the time, he had had no contact with anyone for a long time. In the diary he was writing, there was an interesting quote: “Happiness is only real when shared.”

This quote goes against the current neoliberal concept of happiness, which is extensively analysed in the book “Happycracy – How the science of happiness controls our lives”. At the beginning of the book, the authors Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz made use of the film “The Pursuit of Happyness”, starring Will Smith, to introduce such a definition. The film is based on Christopher Gardner’s true story, who was broken and homeless with a small child in his charge. Due to his determination, resilience, and optimism, he became a successful broker and a rich man with the help of nobody. Now, he is also a motivational speaker, sharing his experience and helping others to achieve the same as him. He is one of several motivational speakers and coaches that instruct people on what to do to become rich and happy. As happiness has become more important in society, the number of these professionals have increased in recent years. Currently, happiness is seen as individual-driven, the sole responsibility of each person, and disconnected from any social or economic circumstance. Yet, Edgar Cabanas and Eva Illouz emphasized the irony of how a man like Christopher Gardner, who “made it” alone, is now helping others achieve success in life.

Interestingly, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is seen as a self-made man that moved to USA to achieve the so called “American dream”, recently wrote a book stating that success (and happiness) stems from being useful to others and having a purpose in life. In order to achieve our goals, people need the help of others and should give something back in return. Of course, ultimately it is up to each individual to achieve their own goals, but the underlying idea is that each individual is part of a community. Therefore, “making it” by yourself and alone, like Christopher Gardner did, it’s quite unusual.

The book “Happycracy” concludes that the current obsession with happiness has fed a very lucrative industry (or the other way around). National policies and management guidelines are now aligned to “positive psychology”, forcing people to be happy all the time and, in a way, blaming them if they aren’t. In some cases, managers argue that companies should only hire happy people and fire those who are not because happy people are more productive and resilient. Resilient to toxic cultures, for example, while remaining productive during the many hours overtime, they need to work to do “more with less”.

Every year the ranking of countries by life evaluations, included in the World Happiness Report, is announced in the media. It is based on «individuals’ own assessments of their lives», as said on the website. This means that it is highly subjective and relies solely on people’s perception: what seems very good for some, can feel very bad for others. Furthermore, people can respond according to what is expected rather than what they really feel. It is no coincidence that the top countries are the wealthiest in the world. There is a general perception that money brings happiness, thus, living in a wealthy country will mean being happy.

According to Edgar Cabanas and Eva IIlouz, the science behind the studies on happiness is faulty and can lead to wrong conclusions. The indicators based on happiness ignore economic and social indicators which directly influence people’s lives and can also influence their perception of what happiness is. For example, the wealthiest countries are the countries with the greatest social and economic inequalities. So, being poor in a wealthy country means being happy whereas being poor in a poor country means being unhappy? In reality, in the wealthiest countries, “happiness” increasingly means to isolate oneself: you can walk listing to music and disconnect from the world around you, you can practice meditation and mindfulness to look inside yourself, you can buy books and courses to learn the techniques to improve yourself and overcome the obstacles and the difficulties that make you unhappy. However, despite all of this, people are getting more and more unhappy and depressed. So, maybe this is not the path to true happiness.

Britannia states that «happiness, in psychology, is a state of emotional well-being that a person experiences either in a narrow sense, when good things happen in a specific moment, or more broadly, as a positive evaluation of one’s life and accomplishments overall—that is, subjective well-being». So, forget about isolating yourself via technology, always pursuing something unattainable, living in permanent dissatisfaction. Happiness is nothing like that, it’s much simpler: if you feel good and feel like smiling, then you’re happy. It could be about a specific thing or a specific memory, or it can be a general feeling about your life. Of course, you can fake it, you can just think you are happy, or you can convince yourself that you are. Usually, in these cases, you can keep it to yourself. However, if it is a true feeling of happiness, you want to share it with other people. You have the tools to distinguish the difference: don’t think and don’t analyse, just feel.