Com'on Get Happy

   Lately there appears to be quite a fuss being made over happiness, reminding me of that old Broadway hit song above (ironically, the zippy version Judy Garland first made famous proved to be yet another Hollywood act as the studio terminated her contract immediately after the filming due to her ongoing problems with depression and such).  Some months ago the New Yorker featured a cartoon which featured a bar with the sign Happy Hour 5-6, followed by Are You Truly Happy Hour 6-7, followed by Were You Ever Happy Hour 7-8.  It was something even I had reflected on in a post some years ago when I quoted a piece in The Atlantic: In a 2012 paper evocatively titled “Don’t Look Back in Anger! Responsiveness to Missed Chances in Successful and Nonsuccessful Aging,” a group of German neuroscientists, using brain scans and other physical tests of mental and emotional activity, found that healthy older people (average age: 66) have “a reduced regret responsiveness” compared with younger people (average age: 25).  That is, older people are less prone to feel unhappy about things they can’t change -- an attitude consistent, of course, with ancient traditions that see stoicism and calm as part of wisdom...None of this, again, proves that people automatically get wiser with age (or more satisfied, or more calm, or more grateful).  Many young people are wise, and many old people are not.  It does hint, however, that aging changes us in ways that make it easier to be wise (and satisfied, and calm, and grateful).  Hmm, I must have been sitting at that bar a bit longer than I thought.

   But then came this factoid from Yuval Noah Harari's book, Homo Deus: In Peru, Guatemala, the Philippines and Albania --developing countries suffering from poverty and political instability-- about one person in 100,000 commits suicide each year.  In rich and peaceful countries such as Switzerland, France, Japan and New Zealand, twenty-five people per 100,000 take their own lives annually.  In 1985 most South Koreans were poor, uneducated and tradition-bound, living under an authoritarian dictatorship.  Today South Korea is a leading economic power; its citizens are among the best educated in the world, and it enjoys a stable and comparatively liberal democratic regime.  Yet whereas in 1985 about nine South Koreans per 100,000 killed themselves, today the annual rate of suicide has more than tripled to thirty per 100,000.  In the U.S. the rate is averaging about thirteen per 100,000 (although adds Wikipedia: In 2015, suicide was the seventh leading cause of death for males and 14th leading cause of death for females.  Additionally, it was the second leading cause of death for young people aged 15 to 24 and the third leading cause of death for those between the ages of 10 and 14.  From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans aged 35 to 64 increased nearly 30 percent.  The largest increases were among men in their fifties, with rates rising nearly 50 percent, and for women aged 60 to 64, with rates rising 60 percent.  In 2008, it was observed that U.S. suicide rates, particularly among middle-aged white women, had increased, although the causes were unclear.)  It would seem, given the recent events in the U.S., that John Lennon may have been prescient in writing "happiness is a warm gun,"  although I should add that the nearly 90-year old lyrics of the above song Com'on Get Happy continued with the words, "get ready for the judgement day."

   So what is making people happy...or unhappy?  Is it just economics as the above statistics from Harari's book seem to imply?  Here's one surprising (to me, anyway) report from Money magazine when they polled millionaires and multi-millionaires on what amount of money would make them comfortable and "happy": Researchers from Harvard Business School recently asked more than 4,000 millionaires to rate how happy they were on a scale of 1 to 10*...the majority of all millionaires said that to be perfectly happy, they'd need to grow their wealth immensely.  The survey follows a highly-circulated study from 2010 that honed in on the emotional well-being of average earners.  Happiness tends to rise with income, the authors found, but only up to a certain point -- anything above $75,000 doesn't seem to have much of an impact on a person's day-to-day mood.  (The researchers found that) In order to get a perfect "10" on the happiness scale, 27% of millionaires said they'd need a 1000% increase in wealth, and 25% said they'd need 500% more.  More troubling, perhaps, is the fewer than 600 (13%) who said they could achieve perfect happiness with the amount of money they already have.  Today's emphasis in the U.S., wrote an earlier piece in The Atlantic: ...seems to be at odds with our culture, which is more interested in the pursuit of individual happiness than in the search for meaning.  "To the European," Frankl (Viktor Frankl, who survived the Nazi concentration camps and wrote the best-selling Man's Search for Meaning nine days after his rescue) wrote, "it is a characteristic of the American culture that, again and again, one is commanded and ordered to 'be happy.'  But happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue.  One must have a reason to 'be happy.' "

   Another piece in the same magazine talked to author and psychiatrist Irvin Yalom (now turning 86) about his own thoughts on life, an area he wrote and lectured about throughout his career: "Even for those with a deeply ingrained block against openness --those who have always avoided deep friendships-- the idea of death may be an awakening experience, catalyzing  an enormous shift in their desire for intimacy," Yalom has written.  Those who haven't yet lived the life they wanted to can still shift their priorities late in life.  He likens the experience to a metaphor from scientist Richard Dawkins: Imagine that the present moment is a spotlight moving it way across a ruler that shows the billions of years the universe has been around.  Everything to the left of the area lit by the spotlight is over; to the right is the uncertain future.  The chances of us being in the spotlight at this particular moment --of being alive-- are minuscule.  And yet here we are.  I often tell friends that as I grow older I think of being at a train or subway station, only now instead of me being at the waiting dock I find that instead I am onboard the train as it races past station after station, an express line that gives me but a glimpse of people I recognize wholeheartedly and who played a huge influence on my life, family and friends now standing there on the platform and whizzing by as I tap on the window trying to say hello but knowing that all of that is futile...this train is not stopping until I reach my destination.  So what better thing to do but to celebrate?

    Somewhere I read that social observers find our Western patterns of life are to accumulate in our twenties, settle in our thirties and forties (work, have families, get a home, etc.), reflect in our fifties and try to shed things in our later decades.  With this in mind I have begun a bold undertaking (at my age, perhaps that might be a poor choice of words) which I have called Take Five.  Each day I must get rid of five things.  In a month, 150 items will be out of my reach; by the end of the year nearly 2000 things.  It's been one week since I started this so already 35 "things" have left this house.  The rules are simple and self-imposed: the items can range from clothing to books to trinkets; cheating is up to me but so far I have been steadfast (a bagful of wall switch covers, new but not used in five years, counted as just one item; but a half-full can of wood stain will also count as one item); if an item can be donated or given away it heads to a box and once that box is full it is gone (so that I cannot have second thoughts).  My wife always reminds me that someone else might need and can use what I have...someone else can gain from reading that book I hold so dear, or wear that warm coat during the winter's chill; someone else can share and maybe experience the joy that that item or music or wording brought to me.  And of course she's right even as I ponder what I will be thinking in a few months as my "but I need that" collection of "necessary" things begin to dwindle.  My one friend who semi-Buddhist in his outlook says that getting rid of five things should be easy (he knows how much junk I have and reminds me "you don't need that stuff") while my neighbors were aghast...five?, they asked, could you do just one item a week? 

    So what will be the end result?  I enjoyed the explanation by NOAA on crabs molting: Crabs (and other crustaceans) cannot grow in a linear fashion like most animals.  Because they have a hard outer shell (the exoskeleton) that does not grow, they must shed their shells, a process called molting...To say this is an amazing process is a major understatement.  Hmm, imagine growing in an entirely new fashion, me breaking away from my linear world.  What will my "new" skin, my new person be?  Will it have changed?  Will I feel lighter, as some have claimed.   Will I arrive at the end of the line with no physical baggage (that would be a yes for all of us).  Perhaps the question I should be asking is, will I be happier?  One thing is certain as I get rid of this clutter, my wife is already happier...Take Five, Dave Brubeck.  Let's go celebrate...   
   

*You can read the full study here if you're interested....