The Happiness Project

by Gretchen Rubin

  As Pope Pius XI emphasized in the Bull of Canonization, Thérèse achieved heroic virtue “without going beyond the common order of things.” (Reading about Thérèse taught me a lot about Bulls of Canonization and all the mechanics of saint making.) I couldn’t aspire to Thérèse’s saintliness, but I could follow her by aspiring to perfection within the common order of my day. We expect heroic virtue to look flashy—moving to Uganda to work with AIDS victims, perhaps, or documenting the plight of homeless people in Detroit. Thérèse’s example shows that ordinary life, too, is full of opportunities for worthy, if inconspicuous, virtue.

  One of my favorite examples: Thérèse intensely disliked one of her fellow nuns, Teresa of Saint Augustine, whom Thérèse described, without identifying her, as “a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character.” Instead of avoiding her, Thérèse sought out this nun at every turn and treated her “as if I loved her best of all”—so successfully that this sister once asked Thérèse, “Would you tell me…what attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see your smile?”

  After Thérèse’s death, when this disagreeable nun gave her testimony during the process of Thérèse’s beatification, she said smugly, “At least I can say this much for myself: during her life I made her really happy.” Teresa of Saint Augustine never knew that she was the unlikable sister mentioned in Story of a Soul until thirty years later, when the chaplain, in a fit of exasperation, told her the truth. It’s a little thing, of course, but anyone who has ever suffered from a whiny coworker, a narcissistic roommate, or interfering in-laws can appreciate the heavenly virtue that befriending such a person would require.

  Because of my happiness research, one of the passages in Story of a Soul that most struck me was Thérèse’s observation that “for the love of God and my Sisters (so charitable toward me) I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.” Thérèse succeeded so well at seeming effortlessly happy, and her laughter came so easily, that many of her fellow nuns didn’t recognize her virtue. One sister said, “Sister Thérèse gets no merit for practicing virtue; she has never had to struggle for it.” Near the end of Thérèse’s life, another sister observed that Thérèse made visitors to the infirmary laugh so much that “I believe she will die laughing, she is so happy”—at a time when Thérèse was in both secret spiritual torment and excruciating physical pain.

  Buddhists talk about “skillful” and “unskillful” emotions, and this has the right connotation of effort and competence. People assume that a person who acts happy must feel happy, but although it’s in the very nature of happiness to seem effortless and spontaneous, it often takes great skill.

  I set out to imitate Thérèse by doing a better job of acting happy when I knew that my happiness would make someone else happy. I didn’t want to be fake, but I could make an effort to be less critical. I could look for ways to be honestly enthusiastic—about foods that weren’t necessarily my favorite things to eat, activities that weren’t my first choice, or movies, books, and performances with which I could find fault. Usually I could find something to praise.

  Also, I saw that I needed to make a bigger show of my happiness. For example, when my Kennedy biography came out, various family members asked questions that, in retrospect, I realize were meant to elicit responses from me such as “I’m so thrilled! It’s so exciting to see it on the shelves! Everything is going great! I’m so happy!” But I have a perfectionist, dissatisfied, fretful, worrying nature, and I’m not easily thrilled. Looking back, I realize that the loving thing to do would have been to act happy not only for myself but also for them. I know how happy I am when one of them is very happy. How happy I was to hear Eliza say excitedly to my mother, as they were setting up an elaborate tea party, “Bunny, this is so fun!” and to hear my mother say, “Yes, it is!”

  As often happened with the happiness project, it was only once I vowed to stop criticizing and carping that I realized the strength of my instinct to criticize and carp. But for the love of my family and friends, so loving toward me, I tried to appear happy and especially to be so.

  A worthy model closer to home than Thérèse was my father. Nicknamed “Smilin’ Jack Craft” by my sister’s friends, one of his most lovable traits is that he is—or, I should say, he acts—unflaggingly cheerful and enthusiastic, and this makes a tremendous difference to everyone else’s happiness. One day not too long ago, when we were visiting Kansas City, my father came home from work and my mother told him, “We’re having pizza for dinner.” My father answered, “Wonderful! Wonderful! Do you want me to go pick it up?” I knew my father well enough to know that he’d answer that way even if he didn’t want pizza for dinner and even if the last thing he felt like doing was heading back out the door. This kind of unswerving enthusiasm looks easy, but when I tried to adopt that attitude myself, I realized how difficult it is. It is easy to be heavy: hard to be light.

  Acting happy and, even more, being happy is challenging. Furthermore—and it took me a long time to accept this perverse fact—many people don’t want to be happy or at least don’t want to seem happy (and if they act as if they’re not happy, they’re not going to feel happy). I’m not including depressed people in this category. Depression is a serious condition outside the happy/unhappy continuum. Whether in response to a particular situation, such as a job loss or the death of a spouse, or an imbalance of chemicals in the brain, or some other cause, depression is its own beast. But many nondepressed people are unhappy, and some seem to want to be that way.

  Why? It turns out there are a lot of reasons.

  Happiness, some people think, isn’t a worthy goal; it’s a trivial, American preoccupation, the product of too much money and too much television. They think that being happy shows a lack of values, and that being unhappy is a sign of depth.

  At a party, a guy said to me, “Everyone’s too worried about being fulfilled, they’re so self-indulgent. It’s there in the Declaration of Independence, and people think they should be happy. Happiness isn’t the point.”

  “Well,” I said, “now that our country has achieved a certain standard of prosperity, people set their goals on higher things. Isn’t it admirable that people want to be happy? If happiness isn’t the point, what is?”

  “Working for goals like social justice, peace, or the environment is more important than happiness.”

  “But,” I ventured, “you think it’s important to help other people, to work for the benefit of others, and of course it is—but why? Why worry about children living in poverty or malaria in Africa unless, at bottom, it’s because you want people to be healthy, safe, and prosperous—and therefore happy? If their happiness matters, doesn’t yours? Anyway,” I added, “studies show that happier people are more likely to help other people. They’re more interested in social problems. They do more volunteer work and contribute more to charity. Plus, as you’d expect, they’re less preoccupied with their personal problems. So being happy actually makes you more likely to work for the environment or whatever.”

  He laughed derisively, and I decided that the proper happiness project response was to change the subject rather than get in an argument. Nevertheless, he’d raised the most serious criticism of happiness: it’s not right to be happy when there is so much suffering in the world.

  Refusing to be happy because someone else is unhappy, though, is a bit like cleaning your plate because babies are starving in India. Your unhappiness isn’t making anyone else happier—in fact, quite the opposite, given the fact that happier people are more likely to act altruistically. That’s the circle of the Second Splendid Truth:

  One of the best ways to make yourself happy is to make other people happy.

  One of the best ways to make other people happy is to be happy yourself.

  Some people associate happiness with a lack of intellectual rigor, like the man who said to Samuel Johnson, “You are a philosopher, Dr. Johnson. I have tried too in my tim
e to be a philosopher; but, I don’t know how, cheerfulness was always breaking in.” Creativity, authenticity, or discernment, some folks argue, is incompatible with the bourgeois complacency of happiness. But although somber, pessimistic people might seem smarter, research shows that happiness and intelligence are essentially unrelated.

  Of course, it’s cooler not to be too happy. There’s a goofiness to happiness, an innocence, a readiness to be pleased. Zest and enthusiasm take energy, humility, and engagement; taking refuge in irony, exercising destructive criticism, or assuming an air of philosophical ennui is less taxing. Also, irony and world-weariness allow people a level of detachment from their choices: fast food, a country club membership, a gas-guzzling SUV, reality TV. I met someone who couldn’t stop talking about the stupidity of celebrities and people who read celebrity gossip, but her disdainful remarks revealed that she herself followed it very closely. I had to bite my tongue not to quote Samuel Johnson’s observation of Alexander Pope: “Pope’s scorn of the Great is too often repeated to be real; no man thinks much of that which he despises.” Ironic commentary was her strategy both to embrace and to disavow celebrity gossip.

  Other people cultivate unhappiness as a way to control others. They cling to unhappiness because without it they’d forgo the special consideration that unhappiness secures: the claim to pity and attention. I know I’ve pled unhappiness to get points for something. For example, if Jamie asks me to go to a business dinner with him and I honestly tell him, “I don’t want to go, I really don’t want to go, but I will if you want me to,” I feel as if I get more gold stars from him for going than if I fibbed, “I’m happy to go, I’m really looking forward to it.” If I didn’t complain, if I didn’t express my unhappiness, Jamie might take my complaisance for granted.

  Some people exploit unhappiness for decades. “My mother always made a big point that she’d sacrificed completing her Ph.D. program to stay home with me and my brother,” a friend told me. “She was frustrated and angry, and she brought it up all the time. She used her unhappiness to control us and my father. We all felt guilty.”

  The belief that unhappiness is selfless and happiness is selfish is misguided. It’s more selfless to act happy. It takes energy, generosity, and discipline to be unfailingly lighthearted, yet everyone takes the happy person for granted. No one is careful of his feelings or tries to keep his spirits high. He seems self-sufficient; he becomes a cushion for others. And because happiness seems unforced, that person usually gets no credit. Thérèse didn’t get credit, even from her fellow nuns, for her tremendous efforts. Because she seemed so happy, they assumed that her behavior was effortless. I know a fortunate few people—such as my father—who seem naturally sunny-tempered. Now I wonder how effortless this really is.

  There’s yet another group of people who have a superstitious dread of admitting to happiness, for fear of tempting fate. Apparently, this is practically a universal human instinct and seen in nearly all cultures—the dread of invoking cosmic anger by calling attention to good fortune. This feeling haunted me as I worked on my happiness project. By directing attention at my happiness, was I somehow putting it at risk?

  There’s the related superstition that if you anticipate trouble and tragedy, you’ll somehow forestall it. Fear and worry can be useful, because thinking about unpleasant consequences can prompt prudent actions, such as wearing a seat belt or exercising. But for many people, fear of what might happen is a source of great unhappiness—yet they feel there’s a propitiatory virtue in fretting. For example, on some level, I feel guilty about not worrying more about Jamie’s hepatitis C. I keep track of every piece of information we get, I go to many of Jamie’s appointments, I’ve learned a lot about hepatitis C. But when it isn’t an active issue in our lives, I don’t think much about it, and sometimes my detachment seems…irresponsible. Shouldn’t I be more concerned? But my worry won’t change the reality of Jamie’s liver. Whipping myself up into a frenzy of fear, however, would make both Jamie and me unhappy. (On the other hand, some believe that if you allow yourself to be unhappy, terrible things will happen—most likely cancer. This kind of thinking isn’t new. During the Great Plague of London in 1665, for example, people believed that staying cheerful would ward off infection.)

  Last, some people are unhappy because they won’t take the trouble to be happy. Happiness takes energy and discipline. It is easy to be heavy, etc. People who are stuck in an unhappy state are pitiable; surely they feel trapped, with no sense of having a choice in how they feel. Although their unhappiness is a drag on those around them—emotional contagion, unfortunately, operates more powerfully for negative emotions than for positive emotions—they suffer, too.

  Philosophers, scientists, saints, and charlatans all give instruction on how to be happy, but this doesn’t matter to a person who doesn’t want to be happy. If you don’t believe you’re happy, you’re not. As Publilius Syrus observed, “No man is happy who does not think himself so.” If you think you’re happy, you are. That’s why Thérèse said, “I take care to appear happy and especially to be so.”

  One of the key underlying purposes of this month’s resolutions and my entire happiness project was to be able to bear up courageously when the phone rang with bad news—as inevitably, it would.

  Well, bad news did come, right at the end of the month.

  My mother called. “Have you talked to Elizabeth?” she asked.

  “No, not for about a week,” I answered. “What’s up?”

  “Well, she has diabetes.”

  “Diabetes?”

  “Yes. Type 2, they think, but they’re not sure. It’s lucky they diagnosed her when they did—her blood sugar level was dangerously high.”

  “How did she figure it out? What happens now? Why did she get it?” Every random thing I knew about diabetes began zipping through my mind: the responsiveness of type 2 to changes in diet and behavior; the tensions that had arisen in the diabetes community between advocates for type 1 and type 2 over allocation of research money; memories from sixth grade, when I watched my friend injecting herself in her stomach with insulin. My mother told me what she knew. Then I called my sister to hear her tell the story over again.

  Over the next several weeks, the news kept changing. At first the doctors thought Elizabeth had type 2, even though she doesn’t fit the usual profile—she’s young, thin, fit. That diagnosis was a blow, but two things cushioned it. First, she’d been feeling lousy, and getting her blood sugar under control made her feel much better. Also, we were relieved that she didn’t have type 1, which requires daily insulin and can’t be alleviated by diet and exercise. Well—it turned out she did have type 1.

  When people are faced with serious setbacks, a psychological mechanism kicks in to help them see positive aspects in the situation, and I could feel myself starting to search for opportunities for “posttraumatic growth.” With various resolutions ringing in my ears, I tried to keep perspective and feel gratitude. “It’s so lucky they caught it when they did,” I told Elizabeth. “You’ll be eating well and exercising regularly. You’ll get this under control, you’ll get used to it, and you’ll do great.”

  Elizabeth deployed the downward-comparison strategy.

  “Yes,” she said. “And think about all the other things it could have been. The diagnosis could have been so much worse. Diabetes really is manageable.” What she didn’t say, and I didn’t say, was that sure, it could have been a lot worse—but it also could have been nothing at all.

  After college, my roommate was in a bad car accident, and I flew out to Hawaii to see her. She was wearing a halo brace with bolts drilled into her skull.

  “Do you feel lucky to be alive?” I asked.

  “Well, actually,” she said, “I feel like I really wish I hadn’t been in a damn car crash.”

  It’s not easy to stay focused on the positive. But I think that my resolutions did help me cope with this news. What if I’d been the one diagnosed with diabetes? I think they
would have helped even more. A common eighteenth-century epitaph reads:

  Remember, friends, as you pass by,

  As you are now so once was I.

  As I am now, so you must be.

  Prepare yourself to follow me.

  A true happiness project sentiment. Now, I kept reminding myself, is the time to keep my resolutions. Because the telephone is going to ring again.

  9

  SEPTEMBER

  Pursue a Passion

  BOOKS

  Write a novel.

  Make time.

  Forget about results.

  Master a new technology.

  Returning from vacation made me appreciate my beloved library anew. This library, just one block from my apartment, is perfect: a beautiful building, open stacks, Internet access, a terrific children’s section, and a quiet study room in which to do my writing—and boy, is that room quiet. I still remember the glares I got one morning when I forgot to mute the start-up tones on my laptop. It was easy to take the library for granted—I’d been going there several times a week for seven years—but my brief absence reminded me how much I loved it (thus proving the advice of happiness experts, who advocate periods of deprivation to sharpen pleasures).

  Given my happiness to be back at the library—and also September’s association with the beginning of the school year—it was appropriate that this month revolve around books. My chief resolution for the month was to “Pursue a passion,” which in my case meant everything related to books. I love reading and writing, and my work centers on reading and writing, yet these activities still get crowded out of my time.