Happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, don’t they? But what is happiness really? Do we know what it is that we are after? Is it some kind of feeling? Or a thought?
Even the most articulate people aren’t able to define happiness effectively. All we can say is that it is a state of mind that we experience sometimes. We can’t always explain it, but when we experience it, we know that we are happy.
Recently, I heard the same thought about happiness being expressed by a Harvard psychologist, a comedian and a Buddhist monk.
Let me start with the Harvard psychologist, Dan Gilbert. He is a bespectacled academic who spoke in terms of data and averages. He explained about synthetic happiness, which is our psychological system’s way of reconciling ourselves to not getting what we want and ‘real’ happiness, which is what we feel when we get exactly what we want. His theory, which he substantiated with plenty of experimental data, is that both these types of happiness are the same. The most notable example was people who won a million dollars in a lottery and people who suffered an accident and became paraplegic i.e. lost movement in all four limbs. Research showed that six months after the incident, both these sets of people had the same level of happiness. Dr. Gilbert claimed that whether we win or lose, succeed or fail, it basically makes no difference because we can synthesize our happiness just as well. Another great example of synthesizing happiness is of Moreese Bickham, who spent thirty-seven years in Louisiana state prison for a crime he did not commit. After being released at age seventy-eight, he said ‘I don’t have one minute’s regret. It was a glorious experience.’ Dr. Gilbert gave several such examples and concluded that human beings believe happiness is something they are to go after and find, while in fact it is something they can synthesize anytime they want.
Next the comedian, the one and only Jerry Seinfeld, whose stand-up act I was lucky enough to attend live. He pointed out in his own jovial style that when something sucks and something is great, they are actually not that different. When we are enjoying a delicious ice-cream and it falls to the floor, this sucks a lot. We look up and say ‘Great. That’s just great.’ Seinfeld said that when he was single, he used to look at all those married men wheeling their strollers with babies who crap all the time and he thought such a life must surely suck. Later, he became one of those married and wheeled his baby son and changed his diapers, and thought it was all so great. When you are dating a person who digs their nose, you feel that the person sucks and you’ll never go out with them again. When you are married to a person who digs their nose, you say that your spouse is a great person and has a heart of gold. People have an uncanny ability of finding a way to be happy.
The Buddhist monk, Matthieu Ricard, who appears in public just how one would imagine a Buddhist monk to look like: completely bald, calm, smiling face and dressed in red and yellow robes. He said that people tend to chase after things they believe to be happiness, but it turns out to be a mirage. People say ‘I will be happy when I get that job’ or ‘I will be happy when I win that prize’ and so on. But when they get these things, it is just a fleeting moment. Much like the water that we think we see in a mirage that disappears when we get there. He asserted that happiness is an inner state of well-being that is not contingent on time, place, or any external object or any person. He elaborated on the value of meditation and mind training that can help you bring your mind to be joyful, irrespective of the situation or people around you. Every one of us can train our minds to be in a state of perpetual bliss.
Listening to these three quite different people who delivered what was essentially the same message in diverse ways, I asked myself this question: Can we really be happy whenever we want to? Let’s see what we know about happiness. It is a state of mind. So it is our mind, after all, and we should be able to control it. Just we like we control our hands and legs. Then surely, we can make up our minds to be happy.
So, whenever you are feeling annoyed, angry, dejected or hurt by the situation you find yourself in or by the people around you, stop and realize this simple fact. With each passing moment, you can continue to be annoyed, angry, dejected or hurt. Or you can forget all of that and simply decide to feel happy. The choice is always yours.
