Facts, Feelings and the Pleasure of Happiness

Happiness is a feeling, not always a fact, and most definitely not an algorithm

Another year, another happiness report to rejoice over and dig into. In case you missed it, or it just passed you by without you ever realising that it was even a “thing”, the International Day of Happiness was celebrated on 20 March, as it has been every year since 2012, to mark the publication of the report.

Happiness is a state of mind, a sense and emotion to be experienced and actively engaged in, not a state to permanently achieve or an idea to constantly ponder (unless you are of course Aristotle or Kant). But the way happiness is currently and collectively spoken about – increasingly through a factual assessment and prodding analysis, how to pursue it, create it, and keep it – distorts how we understand and experience happiness as a personal feeling that comes from within.

In some cases, this factual way of speaking about happiness can make some people numb to it – they can identify its characteristics, what it may look like, but not understand the meaning it adds to one’s individual existence. Happiness, like every spectrum of the human emotion scale, shouldn’t be overanalysed or overexplained. Simplicity can often be more informative.

And when it comes to happiness, it is for us to figure out the mystery of happiness – happiness that goes beyond the physical and mental wellbeing that comes from healthy genetics, a pleasant environment and a lifestyle that works for you – and why and how it ebbs and flows within us. Mystery, in its own unique way, can often be more enjoyable as it requires imagination, instead of analysis, to work something out.

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Whilst I think being aware of our mood can be a helpful thing, studies have shown that paying constant attention to our mood can stop us from enjoying everyday pleasures. This is why I’m slightly sceptical about the expression “pursuing our happiness”, a kind of modern mantra populated within the social media feeds of wellness influencers and self-help gurus, repeated in books about mindfulness, or pressured on to us by people fully consumed by their main character energy. Each of us will experience happiness differently, even if we follow the same rules and formulas. One person’s idea of heaven will be someone else’s version of hell.

In this sense, the “pursuit of happiness” is communicated as an empty expression or must-do exercise, rather than an emotion that is to be immediately felt, experienced and cherished in its own unique way.

We don’t need algorithms feeding us an overdose of happiness content (which often comes with a high price attached - fancy a two hour coaching session with a happiness consultant anyone?) to make us happy. Rather, we need to be open to receive and/or catch a glimmer of the things that make us happy as we go about our daily lives offline. How is happiness supposed to flow and find its way to us if there is an element of control and insistence in the way?

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There is a huge distinction between the facts of happiness and the feelings of happiness and each requires a different forum for discussion. I’ve written about how political wellness as a goal based on factual evidence is important. Indeed, I highly admire how the “constitutionalization of happiness” is becoming more pronounced as it recognises the significance of entrenching wellness and the factors that contribute towards a happy lifestyle (accessible education, community, trust, healthcare, childcare etc) into the framework of how a country operates and thinks about the needs and desires of its citizens.

Countries such as America would do well to contemplate the ideas of James Wilson, one of the country’s founding fathers, who argued more than two hundred years ago that “the happiness of the society is the first law of every government”, an idea which is being echoed by current US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson. Rather than happiness being a “nice to have”, it’s increasingly becoming a “have to have” based on the findings of the latest global happiness report which shows that the US ranks 62^nd in the world for happiness for those aged under 30 despite it being within the world’s top ten richest countries. Factually, happiness as a political value carries higher social currency and emits greater spiritual wealth than mere money alone. A happier society makes a more meaningful one.

Constitutionalizing happiness emphasises that each and every human and animal life has value and worth beyond just existing, and that we are living creatures deserving of the positive emotional heights of the human and animal experience. Yet the facts of happiness, such as having our basic physiological, safety, social, self-esteem and potential for self-actualisation as modelled by Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, is quite different from the feeling of happiness which is very unique to us all and comes to us in different forms, shades, expressions, lengths and encounters. More often than not, the most ecstatic heights of happiness arise when it is not expected.

Similarly, happiness can be felt to its most extreme when we have been absent from it for a long time.

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In her book The How of Happiness, positive psychology researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky describes happiness as “the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.” Through this definition, happiness can be understood as a state of being that requires a delicate dance of emotions. There is no one fit model, no clearcut formula to follow to find and locate the feeling of happiness.

Happiness can be thought of from a collective perspective (joy, contentment and positive wellbeing that comes from having our basic physiological, safety and social needs met) and individual perspective (that our lives are good, meaningful and worthwhile). When we detect the feeling of happiness arising within us, that is when we experience its own unique essence.

This is why focus should be on the experience and pleasure and essence of happiness instead of its pursuit as the pleasure of happiness can be accessed in any moment (yes, really) instead of a thing that ought to be constantly pursued, chased, searched for and monitored. Rather than being emotionally exhausted by the pursuit, I would prefer to be open and playful to the arrival of happiness once it emerges in whatever form or energy it seeks to express itself.

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The West’s cultural focus and obsession with happiness is a relatively new phenomenon compared to that of the East’s. Our understanding and application of happiness as an emotional state differs greatly, with the West often viewing happiness as the by-product of something as opposed to the starting point of everything.

For happiness to occur (at least for me anyway), it usually involves a bit of doodling around with no consideration of time and responsibility. You aren’t controlling it, but you are willing to be trapped in the moment of it. It involves being less aware of other things – the appointment you need to schedule or the event you have to show up for tomorrow – and more about being fully present. It involves your full attention and forgetting about the options of what else you could be doing.

Erik Hoel makes an interesting observation about the year – 2012 – that the International Day of Happiness was created. He argues that it was a “tipping point” year, a year which “appears to be more like 1968 in that it marked changes primarily cultural and psychological, not economic.” What’s more, “the transition from 2012 to 2013 is the exact year the majority of the US switched to finally owning a smartphone.” To me, this suggests a marking point between happiness as a free flowing concept and happiness as something that can be willed into existence, perhaps with the right algorithms and content curation.

Has happiness become more valued in recent years? Or is it simply because we are talking about happiness more over social media and greater focus is placed on mental health and wellbeing? How much attention should we give to other people’s happiness instead of our own?

I would say it’s a healthy mix. But it’s striking to me that over the same period in which greater attention has been placed on our own happiness and self-care, loneliness has increased to the extent that it has become a modern epidemic. Not only are they interconnected issues, they are also the shadow selves of one another. If we connect the dots between our own happiness, the happiness of others and loneliness through both fact and feeling, then surely the pleasure of happiness will become inevitable for everyone if we think, act and show up for others. And in the process we may come to discover more about happiness beyond what we may have learned on our own.