The Illusion of Happiness
What does the perfect life mean to you? For most Havergal students, it means getting into a good university, finding a good high-paying job, and perhaps starting a family with the right person. Many assume that with a stable career and a close-knit group of friends, they would be able to live a happy and fulfilling life. Afterall, if we try our hardest and overcome our struggles, wouldn’t we reach our happily-ever-after? Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that no one will truly live their envisionary happy lives. Yes, it is totally possible to have fulfilling and meaningful lives and people can feel happy. However, because happiness is an emotional state of joy and bliss, it will always be momentary. Even in the best of circumstances, it is impossible to be in a prolonged state of happiness.
Sustained happiness is, first of all, biologically impossible. Most of our emotions come from the release and absorption of various neurotransmitters. For happiness specifically, scientists speculate that dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins, GABA, and serotonin are responsible, and each chemical correlates with a different type of happiness (cite). Because neurotransmitters are synthesized by enzymes, there is a maximum rate at which the body can naturally produce neurotransmitters, and so happiness cannot be biologically sustained. Furthermore, a normally functioning body develops tolerance when exposed to the same neurotransmitters by removing receptors or making them less responsive. So even if the body constantly releases happiness neurotransmitters, a higher amount of neurotransmitters would be needed to experience the same happiness, meaning that even if the body were to constantly produce happiness chemicals, one would not feel a constant state of happiness. Happiness is therefore biologically unrealistic.
From an evolutionary perspective, the impossibility of constant happiness makes sense because our body and brain are not “designed” to be happy. Due to evolutionary pressure, any traits that increase one's chance to survive and mate is more likely to be passed on. While the ability to always be happy may increase our quality of living, it decreases our ability to survive by lowering our guard. For our ancestors living in the wilderness, feeling content means not looking over their shoulders nor being paranoid about shadows in the dark, which could cost them their lives. Therefore, because those who were hypervigilant and on-edge are those who survived, their traits are passed down to future generations. Happiness was only evolved as a reward mechanism to incentivize good behavior. As a result, people don’t have the ability to feel happiness for long periods of time.
Psychologically and neurologically, there are many mechanisms that prevent us from feeling happy even under the best circumstances. Our large frontal lobes, while providing us with critical thinking skills and analytical abilities, decrease our mental well-being by leading us to unnecessarily overthink, stress and worry. As a result, people spend much of their life questioning their surroundings and doubting the incentives behind people even in perfectly safe environments. Additionally, the brain carries a heavy negativity bias. In general, people notice and remember negative aspects of their life much more than positive ones. For instance, if an individual receives 20 compliments but one insult, they are likely to remember and stress over the insult rather than be happy because of the compliments. Due to the brain’s ability to over analyze and focus on the negatives, happiness is likely to be a momentary sensation, while the normal emotional state is a neutral or even dissatisfactory one. No matter how great our lives may be compared to others, we are always capable of using our analytical skills to find and fixate on flaws within our own lives due to our negativity bias. In fact, Abd-al-Rahman III, one of the most powerful and successful people of his time, stated only being happy for 14 days out of his entire life (cite).
So if happiness is impossible, why do we believe we can be happy? The false narrative of the happy life is perpetuated by mass corporations and capitalism to motivate individuals to work harder with the false promise of a non-existent reward. The harms of this narrative extends far beyond embracing workaholic culture as it chains people to a vicious cycle of dissatisfaction and guilt. Whenever they have a bad day or feel sad, they assume that it is because there is a problem they need to fix—something that is actively wrong with their life. This thought process only causes people to over-analyze their own lives and nit-pick every possible flaw, ultimately increasing dissatisfaction. If they felt content with their life before, they may even feel guilty for having a bad day. For instance, someone who just got a leadership position at school or received a job offer may feel guilty for being sad because they believe they should be feeling happy and their life should be perfect now. Therefore, regardless of their circumstances, the narrative simply increases their dissatisfaction.
So, what does a perfect life look like to you? As a society, we need to accept that even a fulfilling life consists of negative emotions and bad periods. It is perfectly fine, inspiring even, to aim for good universities and high-paying jobs; but we should also accept that regardless of where we end up, life consists of good and bad days. Happiness is like the sprinkles on a doughnut that makes life worth living, but not something that is constant.
Citations:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/the-athletes-way/201211/the-neurochemicals-happiness
https://theconversation.com/humans-arent-designed-to-be-happy-so-stop-trying-119262