I recently listened to a podcast on happiness on The Knowledge Project that featured best selling author Neil Pasricha, who – it turns out – is a pretty successful guy. Apparently, he makes a living out of telling people how he became happy (despite the unhappiness that must accompany a degree from Harvard and a successful career) and helping them learn how to be happy too.
I am skeptical when someone tells you how to achieve something that each person struggles to define. For instance, love is something that we feel, but something that is hard to pin-down. Even so, there are variations of love. I love my wife differently than I do my kids, than I do my parents, than I do my brother. How I experience love is likely different than how it is experienced by others. My love for Christine probably varies significantly from how Christine loves me. And there is no tried and true strategy for finding, keeping, or avoiding love. I imagine the same is true for happiness.
I was reminded of a recent Existential comic when Pasricha defines happiness as the ‘joy that you feel when you are striving in the direction of your potential’ (paraphrase). The comic features a random middle-age dude playing video games while an existentialist ghost tries to convince him to get up and stop wasting his life. The protagonist’s reply? “I enjoy playing video games, drinking beer, and watching movies. I’m not wasting my life, I’m enjoying my life.”
With this comic in mind, I can’t help but wonder if Pasricha’s view of happiness is too narrow and can’t necessarily be generalized to those who are in a state of contentment, yet I wouldn’t consider myself one of those people, either. But … perhaps if someone is content, maybe they can strive for stasis. The world is dynamic and ever-changing; maybe it is possible for some people to feel the most happy when things change the least, when they are striving for sameness.
But, for the sake of a thought experiment, what if Pasricha right? What would I enjoy striving for the most?
Potential is not just one thing that one person possesses. What potential do I aim to strive for? A person is comprised of innumerable potentials. I have varying degrees of potential in a seemingly infinite number of domains, disciplines, and activities. I could play the harmonica. I could become a seamstress. A model train collector. A skateboarder. A lounge singer. A film aficionado. And while my potential in each area has an apparent ceiling, the possibilities of potentials remain endless.
I was writing to a friend recently about my recent (yet unresolved) episode of depression and I said, “I wish that I could write expansively, but I don’t think it feels right at the moment. All the bull shit that I am usually privileged enough to have the time and resources to think about and spend time on feels especially bull-shitty right now.” The world is beginning to crumble around us, and the things that I enjoy striving for don’t mean shit and it all feels so fucking heavy.
But I have forgotten and lost sight of a very important fact: none of these things ever mattered anyway. The readings, the writings, the photos, the relationships, the activities … they don’t mean less now that the world is on fire (literally and metaphorically). They matter the same now as ever; they NEVER mattered before, certainly not in any grand way or in a way that was impactful at a level or scope beyond me, the individual.
But with Trump, COVID, climate change, and inequality, I have lost sight of that. I have stopped engaging in my own pursuits to become more aware and understanding of things that I have no control of; in doing so, my baseline level of depressive realism has been overwhelmed with a level of nihilism that is a serious threat to any remaining existential leanings.
I have been seeking hope in what Camus called “the absurd”. But there is no hope in politics. There is no hope in public health. There is no hope for the climate. There has always been inequality and it won’t cease to exist my lifetime, nor my children’s. I should know better than to hope for such things. Instead I hope for a smile on my children’s faces. The glint in my wife’s eye. That I wake up the next morning to experience those little things once again.
So where is there space for happiness, for the aims towards potentials in spaces devoid of hope?
Maybe happiness is necessarily selfish. Maybe – for me – it is realizing a personal and potential hope while staring into the eyes of meaninglessness. Maybe I can simultaneously embrace the hopelessness in the world while working toward a personal potential. Hope alongside hopelessness. Pleasure in meaninglessness. Maybe that is all that anyone can really do. Perhaps there is is some hope that the world will be a better place if everyone else does the same.
Of course, I know better.