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I read a couple of articles today, both written from the reports of people reaching the twilight of their lives, that got me thinking. You can find the articles here and here. Both articles highlight the key, generalized regrets of these older people, and, reading them, I realized just how difficult it is to convince yourself to follow their advice. And the problem isn’t with the advice – it’s with us. It’s so hard to sacrifice short-term gains for long-term happiness.
Studies have shown that lower-income families are generally happier than higher-income ones, for a variety of reasons, some of which can be found in those two articles. The mindset, especially of Yalies, of ambition, of working our hardest for that better tomorrow, seems ingrained in our psyche. There’s an endless drive to be better, to be richer, to be more beautiful. But it seems that once we set ourselves upon this path, our standards of happiness rise and rise and we end up never really happy. We’re constantly looking forward, living in the future, never really satisfied with the present.
Many of us are guilty of exactly the things that Ware talked about. It takes great courage to make an unorthodox decision to pursue happiness at the expense of income, to prioritize our personal relationships at the expense of getting ahead, to choose upheaval in the name of greater happiness at the expense of stability. All of those things that might be sacrificed – money and status – are the very things we seem to be wired to want more and more of. But when you pay for it in happiness, is it really worth it?
I also discovered this response to the question “What is most surprising about humanity?,” which is popularly attributed to the the Dalai Lama:
“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.
Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health.
And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present;
the result being that he does not live in the present or the future;
he lives as if he is never going to die,
and then dies having never really lived.”
The truth of this terrifies me. In our endless pursuit of wealth and status, how much happiness do we lose? Are we forsaking opportunities of present happiness for supposed future gratification? I think we are. But the scariest part is that this decision just seems so difficult. How do you justify the branch of happiness of happiness when it seems like such a nebulous concept, especially when the alternative is concretely better.
I know that I, along with the rest of the Class of 2012, will be faced with decisions like this many times in the next few years. I can only hope that we make the decisions that make us happy.
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