David Lodge is an English novelist who’s interested in religion and mental health. His books are often amusing, in that very dry way that the Brits seem to have mastered. Often, his novels are structured in a self-consciously intellellectual fashion — the structure never hits you over the head but nonetheless provides a nice break from typcial novels. It’s all right up my alley.
Below is a tiny little passage from his novel Therapy. Our hero is one Laurence Passmore, or “Tubby” to his friends. He is a successful sitcom writer, but in middle age he falls into some mental health problems. Also his knee starts to hurt, which seems like it shouldn’t be a big deal and yet it is.
Near the beginning of the book, Tubby turns to therapy.
Early on in my treatment, Alexandra told me to take a sheet of paper and write down a list of all the good things about my life in one column and all the bad things in another. Under the “Good” column I wrote:
Professionally successful
Well-off
Good health
Stable marriage
Kids successfully launched in adult life
Nice house
Great car
As many holidays as I want
Under the “Bad” column I wrote just one thing:
Feel unhappy most of the time.
A few weeks later I added another item:
Pain in knee.
This little passage has stuck with me for years. I just recently realized why. It’s a really nice statement of the most common mistake that we all make about happiness. (I think I’m trying to keep it in mind so I don’t make the same mistake.)
Happiness, we think, is a byproduct of living a good life. And a good life is a successful life — by whatever metric of success we might choose. Some of us want a successful career. Some of us dream of fame, or money. A book published to universal acclaim. A wonderful marriage. Great kids. For some people, the dream is to be able to surf all day and party all night. Whatever it might be, right?
And yet we achieve those things … and we’re not happy.
Tubby’s life is objectively amazing. It’s just what he wanted. And yet he’s not happy! What’s going on?
My own life is objectively pretty good. Not amazing, but pretty good! Happy marriage, enough money to live on, job that I am good at and that doesn’t take as much time as most people’s. I love animals and I own two dogs and three cats. I love a scheduled life and my life is very scheduled indeed. I regularly get to play my stupid online computer game with friends, as well as my brother and my son — and I enjoy it much more than any self-respecting adult should.
In April of 2019, my descent into mental health hell started. Very quickly I was completely and totally miserable. And yet nothing objective about the conditions of my life had changed!
Now, a full 4 1/2 years later, I’m happier than I’ve ever been (though that’s a low bar). Again, the objective conditions of my life remain more or less the same.
In my life, at least, success appears to be 100% uncorrelated with happiness.
I remember reading a little piece (can’t find it now, sadly) in which a woman wrote about achieving her lifelong dream. Her book came out and it was, for a time, number one on the New York Times bestseller list! She recalled the day it happened, the moment she realized that she was now officially a #1 bestselling author. She waited for that burst of happiness that was so clearly her due.
And … nothing! No sense of happiness at all! Not even for a moment.
How is that possible? she wondered.
Can you point to anyone who was clearly more of a success in their field than Bruce Springsteen?
And yet he has struggled with depression for literally decades.
Patton Oswalt and Gary Gulman talk a bit about Bruce Springsteen in this video:
Gary Gulman:
When I was very young, I was convinced that if I worked really hard in school or in basketball, I would do something great and then I would feel good about myself. And then, we both read Springsteen's autobiography, in which he talks about being depressed, and I think, well, nobody worked harder and there are few more successful and he was depressed and couldn't get out of bed.
[a bit later]
Patton Oswalt:
I read that autobiography, too, and it really felt to me, like, you know, 'cause he did these epic four-hour shows. And it really became clear when you read about it that he was just avoiding having to be by himself. He did not want to be alone with his own thoughts. So if I'm in a -- The roar of a stadium became his white noise machine. And then when he wasn't touring or doing an album, he would — wouldn't he like obsessively drive across country alone, be awake for days, and then just park outside of his old house and just stare at it like... clearly going through really dark, weird stuff? So, yeah, it was … what made him a great rock star was him avoiding ever having to face himself.
Gulman and Oswalt are asking themselves, and all of us: what level of success in life are we aiming for? Are we going to surpass Bruce? If not, why do we think that attaining that success is going to make us happy?
Even huge changes in our life circumstances barely move the happiness needle.
Winning the lottery doesn’t seem to make people much happier for any length of time. One study suggests improved happiness among lottery winners in some respects, but not every respect, and it doesn’t last for very long. Here’s a link to a super brief overview of the conclusions of that study. (If you’re willing to pony up the $29.95 to download and read the original study, please hit me up with what you learn!)
There’s an old study claiming that even paraplegics are only moderately more unhappy than lottery winners. One of the worst things most of us can easily imagine, and one of the best things most of us can easily imagine … and the differences in happiness aren’t nearly as large as one would expect.
Maybe we’re just chasing the wrong kind of success?
Some people theorize that the problem is that society pushes us into the wrong sorts of ideas about what constitutes success. That’s a really common interpretation. “Of course you’re not happy — you were following society’s idea of success. You’ll be happy once you follow your dreams.”
But that doesn’t get to the heart of the problem. Because it doesn’t matter how you define success. It doesn’t matter how much you yourself buy into your belief that success, as you have defined it, is right for you. You can still reach all of your goals and yet find yourself unhappy. That’s what happened to Tubby, and it can happen to any of us.
We’re chasing, chasing, chasing. “This moment isn’t particularly happy,” we say to ourselves, “but just wait until I catch what I’m chasing.” Then we catch it, finally. We have to admit we caught it. We did everything we ever dreamed of. And … where’s the happiness? It’s not here. What went wrong?
We were on the wrong path from the start.
Imagine Captain Ahab, in pursuit of a whale, but spending his days walking through the desert. Ain’t gonna find it there, my friend.
Happiness is a sensation (or set of sensations) in your body. The right place to start looking for it is within the sensations in your body. Obviously!
If you want to catch a whale, look in the ocean.
Of course, the rest of the world doesn’t care about your happiness. It cares about your success. You need to be productive! And it’s not just the world saying that — you believe it too. Deep down — admit it — you have bought in to the belief that your worth is related to your productivity. And paying attention to the sensations in your body isn’t productive. Meditation of any sort isn’t going to help you climb the corporate ladder, or find the love of your life, or anything else.
Maybe you don’t have the goals the world wants to set for you. Maybe you don’t want to be rich or famous or anything like that. Maybe your life goals are fascinating and bespoke and completely original to you. But they’re still your goals, and lying in bed feeling your feelings is almost certainly not the path to achieving them.
Searching for happiness is its own thing. It means taking a break from chasing your dreams.
Which is not to say that you shouldn’t also chase your dreams. Pursue that passion! Go back and get that degree! Find that perfect someone to marry! Raise your kids with as much love as you can find. Become the best surfer, the best chess player, the best philosopher in the world. Whatever it might be. Absolutely, do all those things!
But don’t expect any of it to make you happy.
We’ve been told that achieving our goals brings happiness. That’s a lie.
Most of us want to accomplish things while we’re on this earth. We also want to be happy. Our culture tells us that these are two parts of the same thing. That’s a lie.
If we’re not happy today, right now, while we’re pursuing our goals … we’re not going to be happy in the future, once we’ve accomplished them.
So what is the relationship between happiness and success?
I think there is a relationship, but it works the other way around.
In my own life, I’m starting to be less miserable. I’m finding that a happier Kent is a Kent who can deal with stuff better. That guy can get out of bed in the morning and face the day. He can write useful stuff. He can think carefully about how he might make a difference in the world. He can contemplate the state of the world without falling into despair. He can find optimism, hope, love, an interest in the world … and he can use those things to be a better version of himself, to do the things he’s dreamed of doing.
My current hypothesis, then, is this:
Success isn’t a path to happiness. But happiness can be a path to success.
My “blue whales” post is much better than I thought it was when I wrote it. (Apparently I like whale metaphors.) Everything I say in that post, fits here. Please read it if you haven’t.
Thanks for reading.