Unhappiest Place in the Country

The most unhappy place in the country is New York, apparently.

Followed closely by Connecticut and New Jersey.

Apparently, when researchers combined a variety of studies, they found that people in NY et al (subjectively) reported less happiness and satisfaction AND (objectively) experienced in greater proportions the most common factors in decreased happiness: high cost of living, hard or long commutes, unhealthy environments, and poor schools.

Hmmm, I don't usually associate Connecticut with poor schools or unhealthy environments. But the first two, absolutely.

Then why do so many people live here? I would say it has to do with ambition, challenge, curiosity, competition, excitement, at least for those of us who choose to be here. And of course, none of those really lead to contentment and satisfaction; maybe New Yorkers wouldn't be happy anywhere because of who they are. Which is why they end up in New York (or its neighbors). For the researchers, the fact that lots of people move to NYC is part of the problem--people hear that the places are great and exciting places to live, which drives up the congestion and cost of living and hard commutes.

The happiest place: Maine. Others in the Top 10 were Alabama, South Carolina, Montana, Mississippi, Arizona, Tennessee, Florida, Hawaii, Louisiana. Louisiana!!!???? Yes, apparently even with Katrina.

And, for my loyal Texas readers, I can't find where you rank. So, apparently, you're not super happy or very miserable.

The article reporting the studies was clever and acerbic, concluding with

Not to be unkind, but some states that made the Top 10 are among the poorest in the country. Are people there truly happy, or are they wearing “What, me worry?” smiles.

More important, might contentment be overrated? Seriously, isn’t restlessness, even outright discontent, often a catalyst for creativity?

We’re from the Harry Lime school. If you’ve seen the film classic “The Third Man,” you will remember that character’s admonition: “In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonard da Vinci, and the Renaissance.

“In Switzerland they had brotherly love. They had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.”

Happiness Is . . .

. . . it seems, very similar for the Danes and the Dalai Lama.

Expectations, outlook, point of view. Not actual circumstances or experiences. Pico Iyer notes, in writing on the Dalai Lama,

Happiness is not pleasure, [Benedictine monks] know, and unhappiness, as the Buddhists say, is not the same as suffering. Suffering — in the sense of old age, sickness and death — is the law of life; unhappiness is just the position we choose — or can not choose — to bring to it.

In fact, Eric Weiner suggests in "Lowered Expectations" on the Happy Days blog, such Buddhism might come naturally to the Danes:

About once a year, some new study confirms Denmark’s status as a happiness superpower. Danes receive this news warily, with newspaper headlines that invariably read: “We’re the happiest lige nu.” Lige nu is a Danish phrase that means literally “just now” but strongly connotes a sense of “for the time being but probably not for long.” Danes, in other words, harbor low expectations about everything, including their own happiness. Though not an especially religious people, Danes would make good Buddhists. They live their lives as the Buddha advised: in the present tense, not grasping at some future happiness jackpot.

And how do you do that? The Dalai Lama teaches, as Iyer notes,

We can’t change the world except insofar as we change the way we look at the world — and, in fact, any one of us can make that change, in any direction, at any moment. The point of life, in the view of the Dalai Lama, is happiness, and that lies within our grasp, our untapped potential, with every breath.

And that's why I'm counting my breaths.

The Pursuit of Happiness

Are you happy?

What makes you happy?

I've been slightly depressed about the recent spate of articles about how parents are less happy than non-parents, how children negatively affect marriages until they leave home.  I don't like to think that I'm not happy.  Perhaps especially because I realize that I'm not happy in the way I was as a child-free person, happy doing all the things I wanted to do when I wanted to do them.

And then I realized why parents must test lower on happiness scales than non-parents:  it's not really about how happy each group is but how we all define "happy."

In general, in modern American society, the pursuit of happiness is synonymous with pursuit of personal pleasure, even though they are not exactly the same thing.  We generally view happiness as the outcome of momentary, self-indulgent activities--I'm happy if I sleep in, have dessert, get a backrub, take a long bath, work on my crochet, read a chapter in my book.  And I don't get to do most of those things anymore.  

Am I happy when I help mold my children into useful, productive, happy individuals by enforcing rules, maintaining consistent consequences, listening to them, and being present for them?  Am I happy when I sweep and mop by floor, unload the dishwasher, scrub the bathtub, feed the cats?  No, because those things--those things that take up the majority of my day--are not (always) fun.  They do not make me happy in the usual, accepted sense of being fun or pleasurable.  There is contentment, satisfaction, even pride--and these are all good--but it's not what we usually consider happiness.

And I think that's okay.  For two reasons:  I realize that the current materialist/consumerist, immature definition of happiness is shallow and I understand that what I am doing is important and good.  And that makes me happy--it's just not the same happy that I feel when I do something pleasurable.  

Maybe there are different kinds of "happy?"  

Maybe child-free people and parents are both happy but in vastly different ways?  (This is not to generalize that all child-free people are self-indulgent hedonists or that all parents are miserable martyrs, just merely drawing upon the dichotomy established in these articles. Does this necessarily lead us to the conclusion that child-free people are child-like because they can still pursue personal pleasure while parents are grown-ups who don't?  Is it true, even if it is cliche)?

Maybe that is why the early years of parenthood are so difficult, as we struggle to redefine our concepts of what makes us happy?

Maybe that is why we think of children as the prime example of happy people--carefree, pleasure-pursuing, living in and for the moment?

So, it's not so bad that as a parent, I give up some of the personal pleasure that we often call happiness, to allow my children to be happy.  Which in the end makes me and my children happy.  Even if I don't feel happy everyday.  Which, in the end, is what those researchers discovered.

Because, when special moments with my children happen, such as when my children first said "mommy" or first drew me a picture, what I was wasn't "happy," it was joy.  

Six Degrees of Happiness

"A cheery next-door neighbor has more effect on your happiness than your spouse’s mood."

This probably comes as no surprise to Mama Teacher, but a new study reported in the NYTimes today says that you are more affected by the emotions of your friends' friends' friends than you are by events that happen to you directly. In other words, the emotions of my neighbors and local playgroup moms have more effect on my happiness that my parents or sister in Texas. "You have to see them and be in physical and temporal proximity." It's the "socially contagious" theory, also applied to obesity and smoking, which has many detractors who note the effects disappear when researchers factor in shared environmental factors. Final word, from the study's supporters: how you feel (and act) has a widespread influence. Still, they note, "We are not giving you the advice to start smiling at everyone you meet in New York. That would be dangerous.”