On Happiness and its Relative Nature

It is cliché to say that our happiest times were our student days – unencumbered, full of vigor, health and good friends.  But what does it really mean to be happy, and why does happiness seem so elusive that many of us feel compelled to state wistfully that our best times were in the distant past?

Happiness is a multi-faceted state of mind, with influences from many different aspects of our lives – family, health, occupation, and so on.  In this essay I will only concern myself with the happiness that appears to be associated with our experiences and material well-being.

For many years I have been convinced that happiness is a ‘relative thing’.  Clearly, happiness is in the mind.  Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet ‘There is nothing either bad or good but thinking makes it so’.  The pleasure we find in life depends on the highs and lows we perceive, and these in turn are measured relative to our life’s circumstances.

As our life circumstances change, so do our ‘thresholds’ for pleasure.  A trivial example is food.  In my student days, just going out to any restaurant was a joyous event.  My palate was undeveloped, and my expectations were low.  But I have been fortunate to eat in many fine restaurants since that time and my ‘threshold’ for good food has risen commensurately.  Going to a marginal restaurant brings me no joy these days, and I must be careful not to become so snobbish about food that I lose my ability to enjoy that simple pleasure.

A similar situation occurs in play.  As children, we are enchanted by the simplest objects and ecstatic over the most basic elements of play.  We see children all over the world smiling and shrieking in joy in the most impoverished of circumstances, making good use of an abandoned tire or a few sticks and rags, so long as they are not hungry or sick.  Are they any less happy than the little princes and princesses of our own culture with their endless array of electronic devices and playthings?

As we grow older, our play becomes more sophisticated and complex.  A game of hide and seek will no longer send us into a state of unbridled glee.  Pleasures become hierarchical, more nuanced, and we are manipulated to desire more grandiose titillations.  But is there any reason to believe that a simple walk in a beautiful forest produces less pleasure than a cruise on some tycoon’s yacht?  Only thinking makes it so!

As our circumstances change, so do the thresholds of our pleasure. The wealthier and more experienced one becomes, the higher the thresholds of pleasure. One might even argue that a rich person has a narrower range of thresholds and thus a more challenging task to avoid boredom and depression than a poor man does.  But then there is the problem of envy and its negative effect on happiness!

Envy is one of the seven deadly sins and is a logical adjunct to our egos.  Envy has been with us since the beginning of time.  But the modern age with its ubiquitous information and advertising seems specifically tuned to creating perceived needs based on envy.  We buy things not because we know that they will make us happy, but rather because we want to feel better than, or at least equal to, our neighbor.  Of course we also are seduced by the idea that these things will make us happy, but I believe that is secondary.

The problem of envy would seem to favor the rich man (if I were a rich man . . .), and perhaps it does ever so slightly, but ironically envy is an equal opportunity affliction.  No matter how rich or successful one is, there is always someone richer or more successful or more famous, and again we have the situation of thresholds.

Now I am not saying that being poor is a happy state, nor am I trivializing the tremendous disparities in our world.  True poverty brings a host of burdens – debt, creditors, poor health, lack of opportunity, etc. – that can indeed weigh upon a person and create misery.  But I would argue that some poverty occurs because of a perceived desperate need to acquire material things that do not actually produce their desired effect.  And more importantly, I am arguing that there is no need for anyone to think they have less joy in life than the movie stars and the global business elite, and thus waste their invaluable time in frustration and envy, and the pursuit of phantom pleasures.

We are all creatures of our culture and time.  It may be naïve to think that people can resist the temptation to scratch and claw their way to ever higher thresholds of material and experiential pleasure based on the riches and toys they see around them.  If the scratching and clawing is pleasurable, then by all means have at!  But beware the great equalizing effect of pleasure thresholds, and do not be dismayed if your success is not accompanied by an equivalent measure of happiness!