You Are Bad at Making Yourself Happy

Jane - 1997 in Cambridge - maudlin and idealistic youth
Jane - 1998 in Cambridge, England - maudlin and idealistic youth

My job as Writer’s Digest publisher often leads people to remark what a great life I have. So young, so accomplished, so happy!

Well, you know the old cliche about people who appear to be living the perfect, enviable life?

Right—well, I am thankful and lucky for what I have. I won’t go into the happiness question because as soon as you start to talk about it, it disappears.

But here’s the more interesting question: Is the life you lead the one you expected for yourself?

What if you knew that, at age 21, I envisioned this:

  • Working in Peace Corps
  • Getting a PhD and teaching/living abroad
  • Marrying a man I’d spend the rest of my life with

If this is what’s supposed to make me happy, then I’d be living a nightmare right now—divorced in the Midwest with a corporate job in publishing.

We all have idealistic (perhaps misguided) dreams in our teens and twenties. I was supposed to stay at F+W for about 2 years, then get on with my “real” life. Obviously something else happened.

So what happens when we end up on a path we didn’t envision for ourselves?

It’s a question that Victoria Zackheim asked and edited an anthology on: The Face in the Mirror. I highly recommend it.

Back to the happiness question. I read a book, Stumbling on Happiness, that made a convincing argument that humans are very poor judges of what will make us happy. Malcolm Gladwell sums up the book on its Amazon page:

What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future–or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We’re terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that’s so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating—and in some ways troubling—facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We’re far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren’t particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren’t nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

And this in turn, reminds me of one of my favorite passages from Fear of Flying by Erica Jong:

I want, I want, I want, but you don’t know what you want or how to get it. You hardly know who you are. You go on instinct. And your instinct mostly pushes you toward adventures you won’t grasp until you look back on them. Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forward.

Finally: The Abandoned Dreams Depot

And finally-finally: The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory (amazing TED talk on happiness)

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Christopher Gronlund

In high school, I thought I'd go into the Peace Corps…until I found out that you needed a degree. I thought I could go someplace other than where I was, help people, and be taught how to do cool things.

I've found that I'm happiest when I do things I can do most days: going for walks and hikes, juggling (I've been a juggler for 28 years), enjoying a drink with my wife or friends. In fact, the happiest I am is when we have friends over for dinners. I'm happier on those evenings than I am when I see an article I wrote in print, or finish a big piece of writing.

At 21, when I was crashing on friends' floors, spent time going in and out of school, and jumping to several jobs a year when I wasn't slacking off, I thought happiness would come only through writing.

I love writing; it does make me happy. At 40, the things that make me happy (hanging out with people I care about, occasionally traveling, and writing), are the same things that made me happy when I was 20. The thing about being 20 was I didn't realize how much I enjoyed the act of writing–I was so concerned thinking that having things published was the only was to be happy as a writer. Now that I appreciate the act of writing more than ever, it doesn't matter what happens, just as long as I write. (I know I stand a better chance making it as a writer now because I focus on enjoying each day, instead of convincing myself that happiness will only come in the future.)

So I never taught people in some remote part of the world to juggle while serving in the Peace Corps; many of my idealistic dreams of youth never happened. I'm still idealistic, but I no longer look at the list of what I thought would make me happy as the only path to happiness.

Anytime I'm feeling down, all I have to do is go for a long walk or invite some friends over for dinner.

Focusing on being happy right now makes it easier than ever to still shoot for those idealistic goals.

Jane Friedman

Beautiful, so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Patricia V. Davis

Great post, Jane.

dave malone

This is so powerful, Jane. And I think the Jong quote is amazing and really hits the truth. I think Alan Watts says it well too about the stream of life. We're all in it. And you can fight the stream, or you can just go with it. I think it's in that awareness, “Here is the stream of life. And I'm in it. No need to fight.” That's where the true adventures are, without agendas, a sort of Joseph Campbell, following a bliss, (doing what you love in the stream) and not fighting the flow.

I read a quote somewhere from actor Paul Walker. He said something like, I'm still going along and I'm thinking I'm supposed to be a musician. But he's an actor. I sometimes go along and think I'm supposed to be a painter. He and I are both in the stream. I'm way deep in as a writer, and I paint on occassion, but I don't think it's going to help to fight the stream.

For if we are really engaged in bliss, inside the stream, aware (and not fighting), perhaps there's a great deal of clarity there (not to mention adventure), in the moment, and perhaps then, life is lived forward and backward at once.

Jane Friedman

I see the wisdom in what you're saying, which I'd boil down to: It's not about finding happiness, but being happy with what you find. (Not so dissimilar to Darrelyn's last guest post on my blog about the Sanctuary of Self-Acceptance: http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2010/03/0

Where I have a tough time (what keeps me up at night):
I've seen so many examples of people being carried further and further away from their passion due to nonresistance. OR: Examples of people who, if they didn't fight, would not have fulfilled their potential.

E.g., my ex-husband was initially denied graduate admission to the University of Cincinnati. Never had I heard of an admission decision being overturned unless it was in the following year (with a different/new application). But he fought the decision, and he won. And it's exactly what he should've done. What if he had said, “Well, I was denied admission for a reason, so I'll go pursue something else?” Maybe he would've been fine. But I'd argue he wouldn't be living up to his potential.

I see many artists & writers who fail to pursue their passion — often due to family or financial obligations. Obviously there are many different stories you can tell about such people, and they're not necessarily sad stories.

But — in a conversation recently with Patricia (who commented above) — we found a good barometer for where one might stand on the issue: How did you feel about the story of Mr. Holland's Opus? Was it happy or tragic?

I found it tragic. So did The Conductor. But was his a life well-lived? Certainly.

Jane Friedman

Thanks, Patricia! I reference our conversation about Mr. Holland's Opus below! 🙂

Marisa Birns

I've spent so many years “looking” ahead at the end of the path, and thinking about how happy it will make me to reach it.

Of course, there are forks in the path and sometimes I had to take different ones because the one I was on was blocked by something or other.

I forgot, though, to look around and see where I was. And derive the happiness that comes from being in the moment and accepting all the good things I didn't appreciate because they weren't part of the “plan.”

Having goals for the future is great. Not appreciating the way there (and it's detours) makes it harder than it needs to be.

Love the Jong quote. And this post!

christinakatz

What? You quoted FOF! One of my all-time favorite books during my tragic twenties? Love that. 😀

You're making me think now. What did I envision at 21?

I'm not sure. I'd been sideswiped by a personal tragedy in college and was pretty much in full-on rebellion mode. So I ran away to Chicago with the biggest bad-ass I could find and didn't look back for seven years.

Not that I stayed with that one no-goodnik for seven years. There were plenty of other perfectly inappropriate men for me to choose from. 😉

Viva, late bloomers!

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Jane Friedman

OMG! We haven't had a girlie talk about Jong yet? We must remedy that at AWP. I wish I had read her in my 20s; didn't make it to that book until my 30s (thanks to Mr. Malone).

Yes, here's to Late Bloomers indeed!