Last update - 00:00 05/03/2008
The good life is at hand
By Amit Fachler
"Happier: Learn the Secrets to Daily Joy and Lasting Fulfillment" By Tal Ben-Shahar. McGraw Hill, 224 pages., $21.95
While I was pondering the book "Happier," I wandered into a bakery. There a couple of cheese Danishes caught my eye, but when I went to pay for them, I discovered that I had no cash in my wallet. Not only that, there was no ATM in the vicinity. I had just put down the paper bag holding the fragrant pastry, when I heard a voice behind me say, "I'll pay for it." I turned to see a stranger handing money to the cashier. I tried to protest, but he insisted, at the same time refusing to reveal his name. "Food is not something you go without," he explained.
Did the stranger save my life? Not really. But according to Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar's "Happier," he did increase my happiness by giving me the chance to feel gratitude toward him. He also increased his own happiness by helping a fellow human being.
Ben-Shahar, whose psychology courses at Harvard have been the college's most heavily attended in recent years, belongs to the "positive psychology" movement led by American Martin Seligman. "Positive psychology," writes Ben-Shahar, means "the scientific study of optimal human functioning," and it "represents a new commitment [...] to focus attention upon the sources of psychological health, thereby going beyond prior emphases upon disease and disorder."
This commitment leads to a debate that centers on the full half of the glass: Ben-Shahar declares that he deliberately avoids addressing "many internal obstacles [...] such as major depression or acute anxiety disorder." He acknowledges that "suffering is unavoidable in any life, and there are many external and internal barriers to the good life that cannot be overcome by reading a book."
Nevertheless, positive psychology holds that happiness and fulfillment in life are not the product of luck or genetics, but rather come from strengths, which are qualities shaped by social experience and deliberate personal action. In other words, there's less predetermination here, and more free will. The book is therefore packed with suggestions for beneficial personal activities that can help pave the way to happiness.
For example, "Expressing Gratitude": "Every night before going to sleep, write down at least five things that made or make you happy - things for which you are grateful." An exercise of this kind functions as a suggestive stimulus that has a cognitive and emotional effect on those who perform it.
Other exercises include regular "Time-Ins," breaks for thinking and internalizing more abstract ideas in a specific, personal way. For example: "Time-In: Do you see your work as a job, a career, or a calling?"
The first of the book's three parts, "What Is Happiness?" addresses the issue of a definition; the second, "Happiness Applied," proposes ways for happiness to be achieved in education, work and love; and the third, "Meditations on Happiness," explores the link between helping others and one's own happiness, examines the "inner self," and calls for a "Happiness Revolution."
In the first section, Ben-Shahar discusses four types of people: the Rat-Race Archetype, the Hedonism Archetype, the Nihilism Archetype and the Happiness Archetype. He defines each according to his or her attitude toward time: The Rat Racer (an existence with which Ben-Shahar, as Israel's onetime national squash champion, is apparently familiar) aims for a future gain at the expense of pleasure in the present; he or she is entirely immersed in obtaining the relief that comes after the summit. But relief is a "negative happiness," because it "stems from the negation of stress or anxiety." Ben-Shahar describes the gap experienced between the happiness one expects to feel as a result of conquering some goal, and the actual disappointment and emptiness that follow the conquest. He suggests that the real "happiness is the experience of climbing toward the peak."
The "Hedonism Archetype," by contrast, applies to the person who pursues immediate gratification without a sense of purpose. The "Nihilism Archetype" has completely given up on the possibility of being happy. Only the person who combines the experience of present benefit with that of an expected future benefit is truly happy. That, indeed, is the basis for Ben-Shahar's definition of happiness: "the overall experience of pleasure and meaning."
To the Rat-Racer, Hedonist and Nihilist should be added another archetype: the Ingrate, who pursues money as a means to happiness, and never feels he has enough. Ben-Shahar explains over and over that the "ultimate currency" in life is not wealth, but the combination of pleasure and meaning. The book does not exhort us to sell our Ferrari, but it also does not suggest that we should hurry up and buy one. Ben-Shahar believes that human jealousy is rooted in a way of thinking that sanctifies materialism, and not from a more basic jealousy - for example, sibling rivalry over parental love. Is this really the case? Either way, in a culture in which people's worth is often defined by their money, and in which budget-consulting presumes to be a substitute for family counseling, it is important to recall an ultimate human essence made up of pleasure and meaning.
How to find meaning?
Here's the rub: If pleasure is relatively easy to spot, how can we find meaning? Here the book takes an implicitly existentialist tack. Existentialism is hinted at in different contexts, for example, in the reference to the ideas of Viktor Frankl and Irvin Yalom, and in the allusion to time as "one of the most important components of a happy life." Time, Ben-Shahar reminds us, is a "limited resource." Why? The book does not answer this directly, but the answer, of course, is that we will all eventually die.
If indeed there is a profound fear of death behind all this, what, then, is the real challenge? Ben-Shahar challenges the validity of the American saying "no pain, no gain," but to my thinking, the way to happiness passes through the acknowledgment and containment of pain. We can see this if we look for a minute at chapter 9, a meditation on "Self-Interest and Benevolence." According to Ben-Shahar, benevolence is one of the components of happiness (interestingly, the Arabic word for happiness, "sa'adeh," comes from the same root as the words for help and support; and in Hebrew we have the phrase "same'ah vetov lev," happy and kind). However, in order to help another person, I first need to identify and contain his pain; and for this I must first identify and contain my own.
Ben-Shahar rightly declares that happiness is "about synthesis, about creating a life in which all of the elements essential to happiness are in harmony." And he insists that those necessary components include, whether we like it or not, "struggles and hardships and challenges," for example, the loss of a loved one. This processing is made possible by, among other things, recognizing "the privilege of hardship" (chapter 6,) and feeling grateful even for our suffering.
And what about gratitude toward others? Why is it difficult for the less-happy among us to feel and express thankfulness? The book does not answer these questions directly. Psychoanalyst Melanie Klein believed that gratitude is possible only if we can overcome a destructive envy of others and develop an ability to bear the goodness that he or she provides. A contemporary study by Mario Mikulincer, Phillip R. Shaver and Keren Slav has examined, among other things, the place of gratitude in romantic relationships. The results suggest that gratitude is a many-layered experience, which combines positive emotions with fear, vulnerability and suspicion toward the benefactor. The researchers found that the perception and behavior involved in a romantic relationship, the degree to which a person fears or avoids closeness, colors the human ability to feel grateful, and that these can predict the stability or fragility of relationships.
And romantic relationships, Ben-Shahar reminds us, are of primary importance for happiness. Therefore, the chapter "Happiness in Relationships" is worthy of a discussion of its own: I will just note that it convincingly disproves the possibility of the concluding line of our childhood fairy tales, "and they lived happily ever after." The happiness of a couple is not a static entity standing before the two people involved; a possible alternative, more disillusioned and therefore happier, is offered by Anton Chekhov in the final line of "Lady with a Lapdog": "it was clear to both of them that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning."
After my encounter at the bakery, I pondered Ben-Shahar's idea of a "happiness revolution." Something about his optimistic tone is catching. Has it been said before? Perhaps. Nevertheless, Ben-Shahar will make a difference. And if happiness and meaning can be found in a cheese Danish, then there is still hope.
Amit Fachler is a clinical psychology intern at the Shahaf Social and Psychological Rehabilitation Clinic, Petah Tikvah.