The search for happiness
Professors, clergy suggest joy more than fame and fortune
AMY NEFF ROTH
healthy living
Health, fame and power can't help you. Good health, good looks and good grades won't do it either.
If you want to be happy, you've got to look deeper.
Or so say the professors, clergy and regular folk who talked to the Observer-Dispatch about what they think it means to be happy.
They talked about things such as love, meaningful work, giving to others and a virtuous life.
Being satisfied with yourself, doing the right thing and helping others make people happy, suggested Gladys Szwet, an 86-year-old resident of North Utica. For Thomas R. Proctor Senior High School senior Berndele March, happiness comes from being around family and friends and feeling loved.
And for Muslims, happiness comes from the peace of mind that springs from living a righteous life and worshipping their creator, said Imam Sabur Abdul-Salaam.
The paradox of happiness
No one gave quite the same description as anyone else. And therein lies the paradox of happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, yet no one can say with authority exactly what happiness is or how someone can find it.
The whole issue of happiness is complex enough to have spawned three new books in recent months: "A Brief History of Happiness" by philosophy professor Nicholas White; "Happiness: A History" by historian Darrin M. McMahon; and "The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" by Jonathan Haidt. The first two books look at changing views of happiness over the centuries or even millennia. The third compares religious and philosophical beliefs about happiness with actual findings from psychological studies, which often prove to be similar.
The benefits
Whatever happiness may be, it does appear to be good for you.
"It seems that one's mental state, one's happiness, does have an impact on health," said Rebecca Shiner, an associate professor of psychology at Colgate University in Hamilton. "So for example, people who are more optimistic have a better immune response, and they also seem to be better at surviving threatening situations."
And research has shown that people who are optimistic, even unreasonably so, survive longer with diseases such as cancer and AIDS, said Shiner, who teaches a course called "The Good Life," which covers happiness.
"I think there's pretty decent evidence that (happiness) does help (your health)," agreed Dan Chambliss, a professor of sociology at Hamilton College in Clinton. For one thing, people who are happy are more likely to eat better, exercise and stay active, he said.
Means of survival
Some psychologists have argued that happiness makes sense from an evolutionary point of view because people need a "certain level of positive energy and activity to survive," added Shiner.
If we are programmed to be happy, it seems to be working.
“When you ask most people,
they actually describe themselves
as being happy and that’s actually
true across most cultures,” Shiner
said. It’s also true regardless of
race, gender or income, she
added.
Happiness comes
to those who wait
Those of us who are still looking
for happiness, though, might do
well to find other pursuits. “Happiness
is one of those things that if
you are trying to pursue it directly,
you’re probably going to be
thwarted,” Shiner said.
“In general, people sitting
around navel gazing, thinking, ‘How can I make myself happy?’ I
think, they’re going to be less likely
to become happy than people
who are positively engaged with
their day-to-day life, their relationships
and their work,” she added. “In a sense, it seems to work better
if you engage in things that sort
of help you to transcend yourself,
take the focus off of yourself and
your own daily worries.”
The Rev. Lawrence Bartel
agreed. “Happiness is an experience
or a by-product or a reward
of finding the meaningful life,
finding fulfillment in the life that
we have,” said Bartel, pastor of
Niccolls Memorial Presbyterian
Church in Old Forge. “That is happiness.
I think that pursuing a life
of happiness as a goal in itself just
ultimately leads to a life of fleeting
pleasures.”
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