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Yale University (USA) is one of the best in the world. In 2021, only 2 169 out of the 46 905 applications were accepted i.e., a 4.6% acceptance rate. On average, a degree costs around R1 217 330 per year. The most subscribed course in Yale’s history? It’s not in Economics, Political Science, Biology, History, Mathematics and Statistics (its most popular majors), or its highly regarded Drama and Music programmes. It’s in the Psychology Department and is colloquially known as the happiness course! Such was its popularity that Yale opened it up to the public for free, and to date 3.82 million people have signed up for the 10-week online course. Titled The Science of Well-Being, you too can do it by clicking this link:
Clearly, people are looking for answers on how to be happy, and not only through Yale. A quick Google search shows that the self-help industry on the topic has exploded over the last three decades – in 2018 Barnes & Noble, America’s biggest book retailer, reported an 83% increase in sales of books on finding happiness! (Thomas, 2018). Life coaching has boomed, along with all kinds of gurus, retreats, and potions and lotions that promise to make the heavy grey clouds of sadness disappear (for a fee, of course).
Driving this demand are the raising rates of mood disorders. At a global scale, anxiety and depression rates have been steadily increasing; a study in 204 countries for the period 2020 – 2021 showed that “…depressive and anxiety disorders increased during 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, depressive and anxiety disorders featured as leading causes of burden globally…” (Santomauro et al., 2021).
Superficially, the search for happiness seems to be at odds with the fact that living standards have increased dramatically over the last 100 or so years. For example, in 1950 three-quarters of the world lived in extreme poverty. By 1981, this figure had dropped to 44% and by 2015 it had fallen below 10%. Statistically speaking, this is the best time in human history to be alive. Yet, rates of unhappiness continue to rise. Our hearts are breaking, literally – at a global scale, cardiovascular disease e.g., heart attacks, strokes, and heart failure, is the leading cause of death. By far the biggest contributor is high blood pressure (hypertension), and one of the causes of hypertension is chronic stress/anxiety. Depression is the second leading cause. (Lopez & Murray, 1998; Our World in Data; Taylor, 2020; Sparrenberger et al., 2009; The Global Burden of Disease Study, 2020).
In South Africa, the rainbow nation is looking distinctly dull, grey, and gloomy. According to the World Happiness Report (2021), South Africans come in at 101 out of the 149 countries in the happiness ratings i.e., in the bottom third. This is understandable if one looks at what the report considers the keystones of happiness to be: performance on gross domestic product per capita, social support, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make your own life choices, generosity of the general population, and perceptions of internal and external corruption levels! (Chirinda & Phaswana-Mafuya, 2019; Umakrishnan, 2020; van Aardt et al., 2019).
What Is This Thing Called Happiness?
If we want to be happier, we first need to understand what happiness is. According to Bobby McFerrin, the answer is the absence of worry. “Don’t worry, be happy” he sang (https://youtu.be/d-diB65scQU). But it’s a bit more complicated than that. Happiness is difficult to define and measure, partly because it’s an emotion, and partly because it’s so individual – what makes me happy might not necessarily make you happy. Despite its slippery nature, many people through the ages have tried to package the concept into a neat bundle of words.
1: Philosophically Speaking
Over 2300 years ago, Aristotle pondered about the ultimate goal of human existence. He labouriously scribed out his conclusion on a set of papyrus scrolls that stated, in (very brief) precis, ‘happiness’. Happiness, he said, was the outcome of a life well lived that comprised some nice things, achievement, sacrifice, and a good character. He made the distinction between immediate pleasure (hedonia) and the greater or longer-term good (eudaimonia). By way of an example, eating that vetkoek versus committing to your diet. He also said that humans were responsible for creating their own happiness.
2: The Evolution Argument
Charles Darwin (1809-1882) revolutionized the way people understand the natural world when he proposed his theory of natural selection. So revolutionary were his thoughts that, fearing massive backlash from his peers, he waited more than 20 years before publishing his theory. He proposed that some living things are able to adapt better to their environments than others because of a specific set of genes, characteristics, and behaviours that allow them to adjust to the given set of circumstances, while those that aren’t able to adapt die out.
In this way, the process of natural selection ‘chooses’ which genes get passed onto the next generation. Based on this premise, the features apparent in any animal or plant are those that permitted its survival. During his five-year voyage around the world on HMS Beagle, Darwin observed that all mammals, including humans, showed distinct and similar pleasure and displeasure affective (emotion) reactions. Therefore, he reasoned, happiness must have some kind of adaptive function, i.e., it was necessary for survival (Kringelbach & Berridge, 2010).
3: Making Things Meaningful
Viktor Frankl, Holocaust survivor, observed that there was a clear distinction between those who mentally coped with the horrors in the Nazi concentration camps, and those who didn’t. He suggested that firstly attitude was critical: “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” Secondly, meaning – if a person had a sense that their life had a purpose, then they were better equipped to deal with life’s struggles. Happiness, he said, was the by-product of living a meaningful life: “It is the very pursuit of happiness that thwarts happiness” and “happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue.” (Frankl, 1964; Mauss et al., 2011).
4: Suffering as a Source of Happiness
A devout Roman Catholic, Mother Teresa (1910-1997) offered help to the poor and sick in the slums of Calcutta in India and was widely recognised and praised for her efforts. According to her, happiness was to be found in suffering. As she wrote to a friend: “Sorrow, suffering, Eileen, is but a kiss of Jesus – a sign that you have come so close to Jesus that He can kiss you. I think this is the most beautiful definition of suffering. So let us be happy when Jesus stoops down to kiss us.” (Teresa, 2009). Many religious texts maintain that there is meaning and value in suffering. Rather than something that should be alleviated, it should be understood to be something of value which makes spiritual connection and transformation possible (Fitzpatrick et al., 2016).
5: A Succinct Summary
The Encyclopaedia Britannica summarises the contemporary knowledge about happiness as follows: “Happiness [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…”.
All this may be good and well, but how does it relate to our daily lives, how do we become more or less happy? In part II I will discuss some “How’s” of happiness.