In which we take the simple step of asking google [actually I’m using duck-duck-go because I’m geeky like that] “IS HAPPINESS A FEELING IN THE BODY?”
Here’s some typical results.
Here’s a piece titled This Is How Joy Affects Your Body, from healthline.com. It’s a nice, super low-impact overview of the bodily reality of joy.
Here’s one titled Where Emotions Are Felt in the Body, from greatist.com. It’s another surprisingly nice resource that takes for granted that emotions, including happiness, are felt in the body. One thing of note: according to this piece, every emotion except happiness is felt in a particular place in the body, while happiness is felt everywhere. Personally I think this is just wrong! I think people have such a hard time actually being happy that they don’t know where happiness is located. But take that as just a very preliminary conclusion by me: I don’t yet spend enough time in happiness to be able to take it for granted and actually pay attention to see what it’s like. (Unlike anxiety!)
Here’s a good one! Happiness Is Not a Feeling — It Is Doing. Now this is what I’m looking for: some pushback! It’s from Psychology Today. This guy is a real psychologist, not some dumbass nobody real estate appraiser typing away on a computer somewhere! I’m fascinated to see what he thinks, and why he thinks I’m wrong.
Here’s a quote.
We tend to think of happiness as subjective well-being, with a set of emotions and feelings. Wikipedia says, "Happiness is a mental or emotional state of well-being characterized by positive or pleasant emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy.”
And of course, if you ask someone if they are happy, they will probably reflect on how they feel. An unhappy person will bring to mind their feelings of sadness, perhaps some negative emotions or absence of joy. And most would say they want to feel better.
Wait a minute! I feel let down. He’s saying that happiness is a feeling! Why the title then?
It’s not easy, as any unhappy person will tell you, to think yourself happy. But you can boost your happiness by your actions. And you can sustain and nurture your happiness with what you do. Simply put, if you want to be happier you have to do something different — you have to do new things.
Despite the title, he doesn’t dispute that happienss is a feeling His argument is that happiness is something that results from action, and that in order to change our level of happiness, we need to change what we do.
And fair enough. I 100% agree that it’s not possible to think yourself happy! And beddhism definitely consists of a different set of things to do. The “things to do” of beddhism consists of feeling your feelings. That’s different from the typical list of things to do that psychologists have come up with! But it’s the same basic idea.
Sad! I wanted some pushback!
Ooh, now we’re getting somewhere. This next one is from The Atlantic. It’s written by their resident “writing about happiness” guy, Arthur C. Brooks. Three Myths and Four Truths About How to Get Happier is the title. And right away, Mr. Brooks delivers what I’m looking for:
Myth 1: Happiness is a feeling.
Sweet! What is the deeper truth, Mr. Brooks?
We all know what happiness feels like: It involves clear emotions such as joy, love, and interest—much as unhappiness involves emotions such as fear, sadness, disgust, and anger. But calling happiness itself—or unhappiness—a “feeling” is a mistake. That is like asserting that your job and your money are the same thing. You need your job to pay you, and how much you earn may be evidence of your professional effectiveness. But to reduce your work to money would be inaccurate and depressing.
In a similar way, your emotional states both derive from and help deliver well-being, but they’re not identical to that well-being. Happiness is more than a series of neurological signals evolved to help keep you alive, safe, and able to reproduce. I prefer to think of it as a combination of three much less ephemeral components: enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning.
There’s so much to say about this!
So. He wants to draw a distinction between what happiness feels like and what it is. Fair enough. Sounds like a defensible move, at least in theory.
But then when the rubber hits the road, he changes topics! He says that emotional states aren’t the same thing as well-being. But who was talking about well-being? We were talking about happiness!
That’s like if I said a carrot isn’t a vegetable, and then argued that carrots don’t meet the technical definition of a fruit! Fruits and vegetables are similar things but not identical. Similarly, happiness and well-being are similar but not identical.
The argument in Mr. Brooks’ piece relies on saying that “happiness” and “well-being” are not the same thing … but then he switches at will between the terms “happiness” and “well-being,” as if they meant the same thing.
For the record: it’s my view that happiness is very much not the same thing as well-being. The two things have been intertwined with each other ever since Aristotle, who used the term eudaimonia, which is often translated both as “happiness” and as “flourishing.” So it’s not surprising that Mr. Brooks smooshes the two ideas together. But it’s still wrong.
Myth 2 … there’s a lot to unpack there, and it would take too much time, so let’s jump straight into …
Myth 3: Your goal is happiness.
In truth, you can’t be happy. You can, however, be happier.Searching for happiness is like questing for El Dorado, the fabled South American city of gold. When we look for happiness, we might get glimpses of what it feels like, but it doesn’t last. Some people talk about happiness as if they possess it, but no one does. And all too often, the very people society thinks should be completely happy—the rich, the beautiful, the famous, the powerful—wind up in the news for their bankruptcies, personal scandals, and family troubles.
If the secret to pure happiness existed, we all would have found it by now. If happiness were simply a commodity in that way, it would be big business, sold on the internet, taught in schools, and provided by the government. But it’s not. The one thing every human has ever wanted since Homo sapiens first appeared about 300,000 years ago in Africa has remained elusive. We’ve figured out how to make fire, the wheel, the lunar lander, and TikTok videos, but despite all that human ingenuity, we have mastered neither the art nor the science of getting and keeping the one thing we really want. Some people manage to have more happiness than others, but no one can maintain it consistently.
That’s because happiness is not a destination but a direction. We won’t reach a place of complete happiness in this life. But wherever we are in our journey of life, and however satisfied or dissatisfied we naturally tend to be, we all can be happier with self-knowledge, good habits, and a commitment to improve.
I think this is bullshit mumbo-jumbo, frankly. We can’t be happy, but we can be happier? That doesn’t make sense! At all! That’s like saying we can’t be full, but we can be less hungry.
And I can imagine that world! Imagine a world in which nobody ever ate food until they were on the point of passing out from starvation. And then they ate as little as possible before going back to the other things going on in their lives. Then some wise man might well come along and say “we can’t be full, but we can be less hungry.” But he would be wrong. You could be full if you would just pay the correct amount of attention to eating!
In my view, the world we live in is full of unhappy people. People who aren’t even trying to do the things that make them happy. Our entire modern way of life is predicated on not doing what actually brings happiness. No wonder we haven’t found out what happiness is. We’re looking in the wrong place.
If you’ve read this substack for any length of time, you know what beddhism is all about. But I’ll say it again, because it’s the only thing that matters:
Take the time to feel your feelings: every feeling, every sensation in your body. Take at least a little time, every day if you can, for months and years, over a period of hundreds and then thousands of hours. That’s the path to happiness.
I want to link back to this bit that I wrote back in June, and re-post the key quote from the New York Magazine article titled “All the TV I Watched When I Was Chronically Depressed”:
I submitted a request for medical leave, then lay there for a few days, sleeping when I could and wondering what would happen next. If you can’t do anything, and I mean really can’t do anything, if going outside feels impossible and lying in bed is the only option, what are you going to do? I stared at the wall. The color of the wall changed gradually. This was it, some part of my brain that still had critical faculties thought. You are in it now. All those memoirs described this — this state of simply not being able to do anything anymore. I lay there, and the light changed, and my whole being hurt.
But the next day my husband handed me a laptop. “At least try to watch TV,” he said.
The poor woman was being destroyed by life. She was about to take the time to actually feel her feelings, perhaps lying in bed for hours every day — something that would help! This is a known thing in recovery from depression — all the memoirs talk about it, and she knows that! But she was rescued from dealing with her issues and her attention was directed to fucking watching fucking television!!!
I point this out (again) not because it’s unusual! But because it’s totally normal! This is how our society treats people who are seriously suffering from mental illness. “Please act normal,” we say. “Do it now. Your attempt to confront your own issues in a deep way is making me uncomfortable. The mental health professionals say it’s not a good idea.”
And once you start to feel better — good enough to get out of bed — that’s it. That’s good enough. Go back to your normal life. Go back to thinking and doing, working and playing, gossip and TV and movies. Go back to being busy busy busy. Anything other than being quiet, calm, looking deep inside your self for all the places you got hurt.
Happiness is a feeling in the body. If you live in your mind 24 hours per day, never bothering to glance at your body except as an annoyance, then you are never going to find happiness. You will, at best, notice that you’re maybe just a little bit less unhappy than normal.
I want to say, one more time, that beddhism isn’t supposed to be a full-time thing. Just a little bit here, a little bit there. If you’re super unhappy, spend lots of time doing it! If you are experiencing insomnia, then use all of that insomnia time. You’re lying in bed anyway, might as well do something useful with that time! But if you feel like things are basically OK, spend less time … maybe just 15-30 minutes a day, that time when you’re waiting to fall asleep, or not quite ready to get up. Take that time and pay attention to the sensations in your body. Turn off your mind, if you can. Pay attention!
Happiness is a sensation in your body! It really is. If you pay attention to the sensations in your body, you will make progress toward finding happiness.
Well-being … that’s a whole different conversation! We can deal with that later! Find happiness first.