Read more: “How to be happy: Putting well-being on the agenda“
The pursuit of happiness is in danger of becoming an unhealthy obsession. We should learn to go with the flow
THE pursuit of happiness is fine, but little by little it has turned into an obsession, an imposition – a secular religion even. It all started with the Enlightenment. Happiness was not welcome to Catholics or Protestants: the goal was to redeem yourself from original sin, gain salvation and be happy in the afterlife. The philosophers’ challenge was that happiness is in the present, that we don’t have to wait. That overturned traditions in which pain and distress were the main experience, with fleeting moments of happiness. The challenge was – and is – a good one. What I criticise is that in the name of happiness we are making ourselves unhappy.
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Happiness has become a good to be sold. Capitalism requires us both as producers and as consumers to buy, and if we have to buy, we have to look for our satisfaction in buying. That’s why most big stores or companies put the word happiness in their marketing: we’re working for your happiness, and so on.
Hopelessly indebted
Happiness is now mixed into everything, from food to perfumes, face creams and shampoos to health and sexuality. It is being used to erase distress and physical pain. Now you have to be satisfied, whereas before you had to be patient, to work, to be frustrated. The recent financial crisis showed people were overwhelmed by credit. They could not pay back what they spent, which was in part trying to buy happiness.
Today the obstacle to happiness is myself, so I have to be “re-educated” to fit these ideals. There’s a lot of therapy to teach people, to lift all the taboos and barriers which “prevent” us from being happy. The fact that one of the main diseases today is depression is probably due to the fact that happiness is the only horizon: depression happens when you can’t do happiness, it’s an inner collapse. Because people try to be happy they can’t make it, so they try harder and what should be joy turns into a full-time job. But you cannot buy happiness, or build it like a house, or order it like food at a restaurant. It’s much more whimsical and difficult.
There is a new blackmail parents exercise on their children: I made you so you must be happy. The children ask, what do you mean? And as happiness is the vaguest word on earth, it’s hopeless. But if we have to define it I would say it’s a moment of enchantment, when you leave your concerns and feel you are in a different state of mind. People are always wondering, am I really happy? Is that what I’ve been looking for? Instead they should have a relaxed view: happiness comes and goes.
As for governments, the good side is the state thinks it is measuring psychological elements as well as sales and services. But they confuse well-being and happiness. Well-being is collective. Do you feel well, do you like how the government treats you, do you like the health system? But happiness is a subjective feeling, and no state should interfere with my happiness; if I want to be miserable there should be no law or taboo about that. When happiness enters rhetoric, it looks much like the totalitarian Soviet countries, in which happiness was imposed from the top.
What makes me happy? A good night’s sleep, having ideas, and a nice project. If you have a passion it makes everyday life easier, even if you have doubts or moments of sadness. To have happiness as the only goal can make people crazy, it’s too hard, and you never know when you get there because there is no precise definition of happiness.
