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In research done by Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough, those who kept a daily gratitude journal—writing down at least five things for which they were grateful—enjoyed higher levels of emotional and physical well-being.
Being a hard worker, or a high achiever, is not synonymous with being a rat racer; there are supremely happy people who work long hours and dedicate themselves to their schoolwork or to their profession. What differentiates rat racers is their inability to enjoy what they are doing—and their persistent belief that once they reach a certain destination, they will be happy.
We learn to focus on the next goal rather than on our present experience and chase the ever-elusive future our entire lives. We are not rewarded for enjoying the journey itself but for the successful completion of a journey. Society rewards results, not processes; arrivals, not journeys.
The weightier the burden we carried on our journey, the more powerful and pleasant is our experience of relief. When we mistake these moments of relief for happiness, we reinforce the illusion that simply reaching goals will make us happy. While there certainly is value in relief—it is a pleasant experience and it is real—it should not be mistaken for happiness.
We can consider the experience of relief to be negative happiness as it stems from the negation of stress or anxiety. By its very nature, relief presupposes an unpleasant experience and cannot, therefore, yield lasting happiness.
The rat racer, confusing relief with happiness, continues to chase after his goals, as though simply attaining them will be enough to make him happy.
The rat racer suffers from the "arrival fallacy"—the false belief that reaching a valued destination can sustain happiness. The hedonist suffers from the "floating moment fallacy"—the false belief that happiness can be sustained by an ongoing experience of momentary pleasures that are detached from a future purpose. Nihilism is also a fallacy, a misreading of reality—the false belief that no matter what one does, one cannot attain happiness. This last fallacy stems from the inability to see a synthesis between arrivals and floating moments, some third option that may provide a way out of one's
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Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence. —Aristotle
When the question is "Why do you want to be happy?" the answer is simple and definitive. We pursue happiness because it is in our nature to do so. When the answer to a question is "Because it will make me happy," nothing can challenge the validity and finality of the answer. Happiness is the highest on the hierarchy of goals, the end toward which all other ends lead.
The British philosopher David Hume argues that "the great end of all human industry is the attainment of happiness. For this were arts invented, sciences cultivated, laws ordained, and societies modeled." Wealth, fame, admiration, and all other goals are subordinate and secondary to happiness; whether our desires are material or social, they are means toward one end: happiness.
Experiencing positive emotions is necessary but not sufficient for happiness.
The proper role of goals is to liberate us, so that we can enjoy the here and now. If we set off on a road trip without any identified destination, the trip itself is unlikely to be much fun. If we do not know where we are going or even where we want to go, every fork in the road becomes a site of ambivalence—neither turning left nor turning right seems a good choice as we do not know whether we want to end up where these roads lead. So instead of focusing on the landscape, the scenery, the flowers on the side of the road, we are consumed by hesitation and uncertainty. What will happen if I go
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Much of the rat racer's tension stems from the need to feel control over the future. As a result, she lives in the future. The rat racer lives by the "what if" rather than by the "what is" —in the tense hypothetical future rather than in the calm real present. What if I don't do well on the exam? What if I don't get a promotion? What if I can't afford the mortgage on my new house? Rather than fully experiencing the here and now, she is, in the words of poet Galway Kinnell, "smearing the darkness of expectation across experience."
To realize, to make real, life's potential for the ultimate currency, we must first accept that "this is it"—that all there is to life is the day-to-day, the ordinary, the details of the mosaic. We are living a happy life when we derive pleasure and meaning while spending time with our loved ones, or learning something new, or engaging in a project at work. The more our days are filled with these experiences, the happier we become. This is all there is to it.
