How to be Happy in an Imperfect World

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This isn’t so much a solution to this question as a careful rephrasing of the problem itself.

I’m not sure how old my readers think I am, but I have a grown up daughter, so that should give you an inkling!  Oh jeeze; here I go, giving advice again.

I grew up listening to a lot of advice.  This is unusual, because most young people make a religion of studiously ignoring all the advice they’re given.  I think what happened was that very early on, a grandparent here, an aunt there, gave me such good advice that I decided to weigh the tons of advice that came my way, and not toss it out indiscriminately.  (This is good to remember: be careful with the volume of advice you give.  Too much carelessly given advice can completely ruin a young person’s attitude towards advice in general.)  I certainly did notice that not all the advice that I received was good, because─well, because of lots of reasons, but mostly─ because I observed that advice was relative to the circumstances of the person to whom the advice is being given, and the experience of the advisor might not be too similar to the experience of the advisee.  On the other hand, as I grew up, and noticed myself dispensing advice, I realized that some folks observe life very carefully, and are in a position to dispense the fruits of vicarious experience.  (If you were a Roman Catholic priest, for instance, this is pretty much the only legitimate way you could possibly gain most sorts of experience.)

You have to realize that, for most of our lives, which might stretch from, say, the 1950's through the 1990's, we did live in a perfect world; at least in a world a heckuva lot perfecter than the one we live in now.  I mean that we could really afford to be picky about what we did.  This is why I’m suspicious of my own beliefs about how to be happy in an imperfect world.

[I got sidetracked; ok here is what I was trying to say, added later.]

In the Sixties, people began to subscribe to the belief that the biggest single investment in happiness was to get into the right occupation.  Unfortunately, somewhere in the 80s, it got turned around, especially with a lot of bright young people (e.g. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates) rising to national attention, and it was thought that the thing to do was make a lot of money, and own your own business.  (This was falling back on the beliefs of the forties and the fifties: make a lot of money, and you'll be fine.)  People who invested in happiness outside the definitions of happiness through affluence were called hippies, with a derogatory connotation.

In the last few years, young people are realizing that being selective about the perfect job or the perfect career is asking for trouble.  So you have to fall back on a more working-class idea, that if you couldn't find the perfect job, at least find the perfect hobby. 

I still think finding the perfect occupation is very much up there in happiness goals.  But one may have to compromise. 

Despite my warnings to the contrary, there is a checklist of ideas that you might want to consider.  Your mileage may vary. 

(1) If you’re the marrying sort, marrying the right person is probably the single most important thing that could influence your happiness.  Unfortunately, when you’re ready to marry, you seldom have the experience to know what sort of spouse is likely to be a good choice.  What can you do?  There’s a sort of principle of diminishing returns in waiting too long, because there are so many things that you can do with a partner (and let’s not go into too many details) that waiting too long can put you in all sorts of trouble.  So let’s leave this one, and come back to it, if we have the courage!

(2) Getting into the right occupation is still a huge part of how to be happy.  However, you have to look at a number of things:
(2 a) Where this occupation is.  [Can you stand to live there?]
(2 b) What the particular occupation involves doing.  [Can you stand to do that all the time?]
(2 c)  What sort of people will be around you in your work.  [Can you stand them?]
(2 d)  As time goes on, in what way the occupation will develop.  [Is it a dead end?]

I was unbelievably lucky, because I found myself in the occupation of a college professor quite by accident.  My parents were both teachers, but I didn’t really take much notice of that fact, except that they were well respected, and of course I wanted to have a minimum of respect.  Actually, I was interested in the recording industry─not pop music, exclusively, but all sorts of music─and I thought: a degree in engineering is what I need; but somehow, I ended up this way.  If I were a religious sort, I would have been extremely superstitious about the whole thing, and suspected divine interference.  But growing up among teachers, it was fairly likely that I too would end up a teacher.  There are good things and bad things about being a teacher; sometimes there is just too much responsibility.  One also gets an unfair proportion of students who are not prepared for your material, or aren’t really interested in it (a special little bonus for being a mathematics teacher), but there are also some really great rewards.

In an economy, and a culture, in which most young people of working age just do not have a lot of control over their occupation, it is hard to tell them to select that first job carefully, and I'm thinking, we just shouldn't.  It is such a challenge to get employment at all.  Just get a job, to start with.

If one has any choice in one’s employment at all, it is probably wise to have half an eye towards moving into a job that is likely to make you happy.  But being preoccupied with getting just the right job is, in my humble opinion, too risky.  Just go out, and find a moderately good job.

(3) Having wide interests is supremely important.  Why?  Among the things that are the most fun in life are the people around you.  At a bar, with everybody yelling at the tops of their voices, you cannot really find out enough about a person you might meet, except that they’re good at yelling, or they like the same football team.  But in another environment, if you’re trying to talk to someone, to find out what sort of stuff they’re interested in, it really helps if there is at least a 5% probability that you might have an interest in common.
If you want to get married someday, and have kids, you want to make sure that you have something to talk about with your future spouse (other than just money and sex, fascinating though they are,) and your offspring!  I cannot overemphasize too much the importance of developing a number of interests: sports, the arts, food, architecture, education, the theatre, music, literature, reading, collecting, politics, current events, game shows, movies, people watching, kids, religion, philosophy, your city, your local schools, your neighbors!  Pumping iron, health, celebrity gossip ... okay, maybe we ought to stop now.

(4)  Start early in trying to live a healthy life.  Nothing ruins things as much as getting some ailment that you could have avoided.  You need not go overboard; keep it moderate.  But making sure you eat moderately, exercise moderately, and get a good night’s sleep, is something that will pay off in the long run.

Also keep an eye on the health of your immediate family: your parents, your brothers and sisters, and nieces and nephews.  Obviously, not everybody has a good relationship with their immediate family, and your interest in their health might not be welcome.  OK, fine.  But they must realize that, if they’re receptive about preventive health measures, you’re more likely to be receptive to being consulted if and when they get into health difficulties.  If they completely ignore your pleas that they should stop binge drinking, they know that there’s no point coming to you when they’ve got cirrhosis of the liver.  This is a mean position to take, but there’s obviously a limit to how much you want to help irresponsible relatives.

(5)  Learn to cook.  You aren’t going to believe how much pleasure you’re going to get from just cooking food for yourself and your family and friends.  If you learn to prepare healthy food that tastes good, you’re going to enjoy eating healthy food, which can only help.

(6)  Take an interest in the Arts, especially classical and ancient art.  It is so important to know what people of many centuries ago did to make their communities culturally rich, their cities beautiful, and their gatherings fun and exciting.  Most of us need not be convinced about how important we are to the universe!  But being connected to the rest of humanity, sideways, to our fellow creatures across the country, and throughout the world, but also backward in time, to our forebears, and our philosophical and cultural ancestors is very important.  As a part of this, keep in touch with your favorite teachers from grade school and high school, and even college.  They’re sort of our ancestors, too: our intellectual ancestors.

(7)  Try to reestablish a relationship with your parents.  Many folks have so looked forward to escaping the clutches of their parents, that they don’t see them as fellow-adults, but only as their parents, that is, people who had been in authority over them during their childhood.  If it is possible to reestablish an adult-to-adult relationship with your parents (or even with just one of them), you will find it more significant than your relationship with most others.  It has to be done in such a way that there isn’t any longer the authoritarian aspect of it; you’re no longer going to be talked at.  But you must be willing to be talked with.  It might not be easy, but it is absolutely worth at least ten tries, at five year intervals!

The same is true for your siblings, brothers and sisters.  Some people have a wonderful relationship with their brothers and sisters, others have siblings that only give them pain, anxiety, and intestinal gas.  The happier people I know get along well with their siblings.  It’s hard to tell whether it is cause or effect!

(8)   Consider having children.  Children can most definitely be an absolute curse, but that is the less probable situation.  If you were a problem child, or if you grew up with siblings who were difficult people, you’re likely to assume that having kids is going to destroy you.  Sure; it could happen.  But you might also have an enormous amount of fun with them, or if you choose to have just one, with him or her.  I can only advise from my own experience: it was a blast!  And it still is.  She just called me up and yakked about her dog.  (You have to listen to a lot of chitchat about pets.)

(9)  This is probably the hardest advice to give, but focusing just a little bit more on the happiness of others can make all the difference in your own happiness.  I don’t want to elevate this principle to the level of a religious belief, but you have to admit that the big humanitarians and philanthropists out there seem to have so much more of a good time than the stingy businessmen who constantly whine about being overtaxed and cheated by their employees.  Coincidence?  I think not.

(10)  A sense of humor.  Anyone who reads this, and doesn't know that he/she doesn't really have a good sense of humor, is likely to get immediately pissed off.  This is one of those crazy things that is so difficult to quantify that it is better left alone: if you've got a sense of humor, good for you; if you don't: what can you do?

Coming back to (1), I myself have been fortunate to find someone who is just as big a kidder as I am, and we laugh our way through life, and the big Pennsylvania snowstorms, which frustrate us Pennsylvanians, leave those in the South shuddering, and make people in Upstate New York laugh themselves sick.  But you can't stop with a partner who is just a bag of chuckles; you have to find someone who is on board with your attitude to the world.  If you like the Arts, don't try to make a partnership with someone who does not understand that.  If your destiny is to die on a speedway, don't try to partner with someone who hates taking risks.  If you like to drink, a teetotaler* is going to hate living with you.  

A beautiful partner is wonderful, but I think it's best to look on a potential partner as we're told that women do:  evidently most (straight) women seek a man who would be the best possible father to their children.  (I learned this is from someone who has studied human evolution, but perhaps I haven't remembered the conclusion accurately; I certainly cannot give you a reference.  The take-away was that males try to optimize the number of females with whom they have sex, thus ensuring that their genes are cast as widely as possible.  This was taken to mean that males were innately promiscuous.  In contrast ─said this obnoxious study─ females are concerned with the success of their offspring, and are thus perceived, by the study, as innately monogamous.  Remember, this was a poorly remembered conclusion from a theoretical study.)

To conclude, there are certainly many ways, some of them more effortless than others, in which you can improve your chances of being happy.  Many of them, it will be seen, involve making others happy too, as a by-product!  (You might prefer to ignore that observation, in case you hate to make others happy.)

*Someone who does not approve of, and doesn't use, alcohol.