How to Be Happy

A recent student exercise was on a study of happiness: what makes you happy? It is presumably central to human existence, since it is one of the three inalienable rights listed in the Declaration of Independence: “the pursuit of happiness.” The Alpha course introductory session I recently attended started with the same question. It seems the thing everyone is asking.

The academic study cites a “wide variety of factors.” “Income, job satisfaction, and possessions”; “wealth, jobs and relationships.” It notes that these are the factors used in the World Happiness Report.

Which is not really helpful, since it is tautological. It begins with the unproven assumption that these are the factors that lead to happiness. 

I think the factors cited are somewhat off the mark. It is pretty well established that wealth or possessions do not lead to happiness. Relationships do, but then relationships can also be the source of deep unhappiness as well.

The answer is so simple; yet the misdirected focus on the material is why so many people are unhappy currently. This is why the rates of depression are soaring year by year.

Three things bring happiness: art, religion, and relationship. 

Art: we feel happiness listening to some music we like, or watching an engrossing movie. Even if it is just “entertainment,” we are transported to some other, better place. There is a world we connect with then, and that is where joy comes from. It is the spiritual world, the world of the imagination.

Religion: one could substitute the more generic, “meaning.” If you have a sense of meaning or purpose in your life, happiness ensues. Materialism strips the world of meaning. 

Relationships: a materialist perspective will hear this as “sex.” Substituting sex for relationship is devastating to happiness. All that is left is constant betrayal—relationships become a source of unhappiness. 

Happiness is from the spirit. Unhappiness is being dispirited.

Why Faust Is Depressed

Conscience: Le Falher.

A friend of mine, 79, went to his doctor recently. It happens, when you’re 79. The good doctor asked if he was ever depressed these days. “It happens to most people your age,” he explained, reflecting, I believe, received medical wisdom. “Eventually, you realize that you aren’t going to live forever.”

Now that’s a shocker. Who knew?

In other words, this bit of received wisdom among the medical profession makes no sense to me. Haven’t most of us always understood we weren’t going to live forever? And so what? If there is an afterlife, we can perhaps look forward to something better. If there is not, we face nothing worse than going out like a light. Yes, of course, there is the option of hellfire… I suppose that is reason for depression.

Interestingly, the medical consensus apparently does not tally with the real world most of us inhabit. Most people, after sixty, just get happier and happier. Multiple studies show this.

How to explain this discrepancy? My guess is that it shows there are two kinds of people. You might call them the sheep and the goats. The good news is, most of us are apparently sheep.

But maybe doctors are mostly goats.

I mentioned this strange discrepancy in perceptions to a Pakistani friend. He told me in response a tale of a man from his own village. This man had faced terrible struggles and adversity throughout his life. Though he was a good man, honest, hard-working, kind, he could never get a break.

In his old age, he was uncommonly happy. Asked why, he replied, “happiness is the reward for a clear conscience in old age.”

Saint Paul said something similar:

For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. 7I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith; 8in the future there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness,

Conscience: Chifflart.

This need not be about anticipated reward in heaven, either. This is about not being haunted by a bad conscience, and the realization that too soon it will be too late to set things right.

I worry, however, about those who rely on doctors for advice—including psychiatrists. G.K. Chesterton once wrote that psychotherapy is simply confession without absolution. Psychiatrists will work on improving your “self-esteem,” and try to convince you that everything is all right as it is. They have a personal, vested interest in believing this is so—the world and sheer self-centredness has so far been good to them. But your conscience is telling you you must change.

Caught in the middle, you may never heal.

Happiness is ...

North window, Notre Dame de Paris

Too late loved I Thee, O Thou Beauty of ancient days, yet ever new! too late I loved Thee! --St. Augustine, Confessions

You may have read recently, as I have, that Denmark is the happiest place on earth. But then, the OECD, contradicting this, has declared Australia the happiest developed country.

You would do well to read the fine print. These claims are completely bogus, and politically motivated. What these “studies” have done is selected the things they believe are social goods, and declared those countries happiest that have the most of them: highest income, longest lifespan, greatest “civic engagement,” and so forth.

Do these things really produce happiness? We do not know; though there is certainly evidence that high income does not. You might or might not have read the poem “Richard Corey”; but it is built on a common observation.

Dayana Mendoza, Miss Venezuela and Miss Universe 2007.

This is a sad thing about America. It is built on the “American Dream,” and the “American Dream” is basically, based on Calvinist theology, that the point of life is to get rich. A well-read Korean once asked me why it was that American literature almost always rejects the American Dream—that the American Dream is hollow seems to be the one great insight of American literature. There is an obvious reason. It is.

Now think for a moment: how on earth do you really measure happiness? How do you know that Sam, over there, is happier or sadder than James, over here? Happiness is a purely subjective quality. Even if you ask Sam, he cannot know whether he is happier or sadder than James.

But here's a really good idea that someone has actually had: go to Instagram, and tally different countries by the number and size of smiles. That really ought to work: a smile is usually a spontaneous external expression of happiness. And the study is half-blind—the subjects at least do not know they are being studied.

The results might or might not surprise you. Neither Denmark nor Australia make the top ten. Here they are:

1. Brazil 
2. Nicaragua 
3. Colombia 
4. Bolivia 
5. Costa Rica 
6. Honduras 
7. Venezuela 
8. Philippines 
9. Guatemala 
10. Mexico 

What does this teach us? First, as previously noted, having the highest income does not produce happiness. Brazil is the world's 60th richest country by GDP. As a group, in world terms, these countries are resolutely middle income—although dirt poor by Canadian standards. This demonstrates the wisdom of the old adage I just learned: it is best to be neither very rich nor very poor.

Having a democratic government, or even a good government, does not seem to help either. None of these countries would score well on either league table. Venezuela makes the list. On the other hand, none is nearly so efficient as to manage to be genuinely oppressive.

Having a lot of social services or a social safety net? Does not register. Life expectancy does not matter.

Two things do seem to matter: having a Latin culture, and being Catholic. That, and perhaps a warm climate.

Note that, despite being Latin, Spain and Portugal do not themselves make the list. This suggests that being too well-off is a hindrance to happiness. Note that, despite being both poor and Latin, Cuba does not make the list. This suggests that having too many social services is a hindrance to happiness—although it might instead be the absence of personal freedoms that tends to go with them. 

Sinulog, Cebu. It brought tears to my eyes.

I can vouch for the Philippines. It is quite uncanny, really, coming to the Philippines from most other countries in Asia. You go from everybody looking glum to everybody smiling. This despite the fact that most of the surrounding countries are currently richer.

It has also been a common observation about Ireland by those coming there, as most traditionally have, from England: despite everything, the Irish always seem so damned happy. It used to be a common observation about Quebec, by those coming there from English Canada or the USA.

Not all Latin cultures, but all Catholic.

This, to my mind, demonstrates that Catholicism really is the pinnacle of human civilization. As the accountant says in Citizen Kane, “anyone can become rich—if that's all you want to do.” Surely having a rich, full life is more valuable, and sacrificing that to become rich is a fool's bargain. One notes that even English Protestants, once they retire, prefer if they can afford it to move to Spain. Catholicism simply has the different parts of life in proper balance, and it is better at giving meaning to life. Without meaning, there is no happiness—depression is the absence of meaning.

Part of this is an appreciation for other people instead of material things. There is a deep human warmth one feels in an Irish, an Italian, or a Latin community. Part too is an appreciation for beauty. One of the most thoroughly oppressive things I find about England, or the US, or English Canada, something almost suffocating, is their lack of any interest in the beautiful. In fact, they seem to avoid it deliberately, as if they are trying to make a point. 

Notre Dame Basilica, Montreal

To a Catholic, this in itself is sacrilegious. God is three things: the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. To deny one is to deny his nature. And this is probably where the Latin cultures specifically are the world beaters. It is not a coincidence, surely, that Miss Universe or Miss World is usually from a South American nation. But I do not mean, of course, only the beauty of women. I mean taking the time and trouble to create beauty in daily life.

That, in a way, is Catholicism. Catholicism takes life, and makes it art.