Sometimes, in crisis, that’s a big accomplishment. As a way of life, it’s pointless. Pursuing the Next Big Thing, though, gives shape and meaning to life. People who think that 40% more income will bring them happiness have the mindset that happiness is a destination, not a journey.

I often think happiness, like life, happens while you’re making other plans. It’s there along the (metaphorical) roadside, you have to learn to recognize it and seize those moments. But unless you’re actually *traveling* (in the psychological sense) somewhere, you’ll never encounter it.

Notice the Constitution doesn’t say we have a right to possess happiness. Only to pursue it.

I have a vague memory of reading some research related to that mentioned by Robert – supposedly it showed that happiness is not related to financial well-being by finding out that general levels of happiness before and after a financial windfall had not changed. People who think they’d be happy (as opposed to, say, less worried about making the next month’s rent) with merely an increase in income misunderstand the whole idea.

I’ve always wondered a bit about that ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ in the American constitution. I can understand that it’s a good thing to be alive, and generally speaking increased liberty has benefits too. But pursuing happiness? What a futile thing to try! And as an goal – it’s like that silly song ‘Don’t worry! Be happy!’ – irritating and pointless. I must be missing something.

And surely better living through chemistry is not the only answer. There was a personal satisfaction survey of a few years ago which asked people how much mone they’d have to earn to be truly happy and content. Fairly consistently, it worked out to 40% more than whatever the respondent was making.

Philosophy might teach us how to think straight, or to recognize common errors, but as for teaching us to be happy, I’d as son try to teach people to be tall and agile, or to have blue eyes. You might manage to teach contentment, but that’s a very different thing.

How’s that for covering all the options?

I know a lot of people who tend to a rather down and depressive response to life. It often doesn’t develop into actual pathology, eg a case of clinical depression, but it’s there for sure. I myself have learned that if I take care of myself in a basic way – don’t get too overtired or overstressed – and stop and think before I let myself adopt my initial response to unexpected events, I’m much more cheerful than I am if I just bounce along living sort of instinctively. This has sometimes gotten me called ‘Pollyanna’, but, hey, it works, and besides, I really must read that book sometimes because I’ve heard that she had a ‘make the best of things’ attitude and not an irrationally optimistic one.

But I’m never going to be perpetually and automatically happy, and I know people who don’t really seem capable of achieving much more than occasional contentment (which is nothing to be sneezed at). The thing to remember is that as long as I haven’t accidentally or deliberately done something to hurt one of these people, their unhappiness is not my fault. No one can make another person happy. The best anyone can hope for is to not make it impossible for them to find some happiness on their own by mistreating them.

Seems to me that being optimistic does have quite a bit to do with happiness. And while I’ve known plenty of folks who do seem to positively revel in their misery, I”m not sure that truly qualifies as happiness. The rewards they get from being miserable don’t seem to translate directly into “happiness” to me. Perhaps because I define happiness of having elements of serenity and content, and those kinds of people certainly have neither. What they have is a mind-set they are unwilling or unable to change, no matter their life-circumstances.

I suspect there’s quite a bit of inborn ability to learn to be happy. I knew when I had a child with him that my ex was naturally a gloomy, brooding, solitary type. 22 years of attempting to modify the personality of my son to teach him how to achieve, recognize and value happiness has only been partially successful. The best I can do has been to let him live his life a little bit more conscious of the reality of his personality, and not be controlled by it totally. Despite the fact he’s never lived with his father, and has had very limited contact with him for his entire life, his personality is far more like his father’s than like mine or his stepfather’s. Go figure.