Wednesday, July 27, 2011

I wish you every success and happiness in life

I'm not a fan of anything "social" - having an actual "social life" has proven interesting, bizarre and disastrous - but having signed onto Google Plus, I've discovered that I like it.  This is largely because the vast human population has yet to get on G+, which means I'm yet to be bombarded by messages like "[Your ex sorority sister who was two years younger than you and whose name you barely even recognize] will be performing in [a skit whose political principles you find ludicrous] in [a town 20,000 miles away] on [a day you will probably spend drinking]" or messages like "Check out this post about you xxxapoiwern ta NOT SPAM."

Facebook is already a victim of its own success.  The future probably lies in small, very exclusive social networks bound together by mutual interests, to which people will require invitation and pay to belong.  If this seems brutally elitist, remember that the Internet has brought us back to the days of industrial London, when the main purpose of building a house was to erect a doorway between yourself and the teeming masses who wanted to steal your hard-earned shit.

Back at the ranch, though, another rant is brewing.  "What Makes Us Happy?" asks the Atlantic.  (And speaking of elitist clubs, this title sounds like the essay prompt for a test to get into one of them)

The essay focuses on the infamous Grant Study, which I'm reading about in conjunction with "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell.  Without getting too detailed, in the interests of disclosure let me briefly say that recently I have realized two things: 1) it is not that hard to be "successful" and 2) the problem is maintaining your equanimity in the face of "success."

I put "success" in quotes. As a girl I wanted two things: to be successful and to own, one day, a very large wolfhound.  In both cases, my motivations were the same.  In both cases, the potential drawbacks were the same, although that may not be as immediately apparent.

But nothing is as mundane as the personal, so.  Vaillant's Grant Study seems concerned with the psychological factors that make one man more likely to be happy than another.  The difference, let's say, between a happy octogenarian and Ernest Hemingway.  Meanwhile, Gladwell's essay seems concerned with the physical parameters of success - with peeling back and poking at the tender center of every so-called opportunity that nourished successful people on the path to greatness.  Both want to answer the same question: what, really, is the role of accident?

What, exactly, is "accident" anyway?  Because I started typing at a precociously young age and am near-religious about file backups, I have access to the diary entries I wrote when I was thirteen.  In one of them, full of self-importance, I wrote, "Dear Diary, I look at some of the adults I know and I'm terrified of turning out like them.  They're so ordinary.  At one point does someone become okay with ordinariness?  Want it, even?"

The more I read of these studies, the more convinced I become that the human urges worth dissecting are really those of the reader.  Our obsession with clearly defined "success."  With marking happiness out distinctly, like a goal on a soccer field.  (I'm not arguing that some things can't be objectively good.  Food, for example.  Avoiding starvation.  Objectively good.)   But remembering that you "should" be happy doesn't really help you be happy, it just reminds you to put a better face on your unhappiness in front of others.

Consider this quote (reading it was both eerie and uncomfortable): "A man at 20 who appears the model of altruism may turn out to be a kind of emotional prodigy—or he may be ducking the kind of engagement with reality that his peers are both moving toward and defending against."

The filling in this nasty little bonbon appears to be: "if you seem well-adjusted, you're very possibly just in denial about how much your life is going to suck."  Thanks, Vaillant, but I can't help but wish you'd chosen another line of work.

About another case, a depressive who surprises everyone by turning out a happy and well-rounded man, the article says, "Finally, at age forty, wish became behavior".

If there's any downside to the Grant Study, it's that it seems to very closely correlate personal and professional success.  The "successful" men become passionate professionals with well-balanced family lives.  The failures are alcoholic divorcees in the unemployment line.  Gladwell's book completely ignores the concept of psychological happiness, which is fine from a scholarly point of view but a bit of a losing proposition from the reader's personal perspective.  After all, "the story of the man who started Microsoft" is a best-seller partly because of the underlying cultural assumption, "if I founded Microsoft, I would be happy."

The reality, reading between Gladwell and Vaillant's lines, seems much, much more painful and nuanced.  We all strive so hard for success.  But perhaps "success" is the norm - after all, most people can achieve some measure of success if they work hard enough.  If so, then is happiness the accident?

1 comment:

  1. Happiness is part accident, but also part the result of very hard and objective work. You look yourself, life, and your hopes/accomplishements in the face, and you make many many choices that advance your happiness (not merely advance someone else's definition of your happiness). it harder than becoming moderately successful - that, as you corrrectly point out, isn't that hard to do.

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