On Work

Finished Joshua Ferris's Then We Came to the End.  It's his first novel, and it centers around a series of workplace dramas.  I've been thinking a lot about work, purpose, and happiness lately.

It's funny: happiness ends up depending on such a random mix of factors.  But, given how many hours we spend working, it's not surprising that how happy you are will partially depend on how satisfied you are by your work.

The following passage is taken from the novel and is a conversation between a partner at an advertising firm and her subordinate:

   He was silent.  "You've worked hard."
   "Yes," she agreed.  She had finished putting on her shoes and was now sitting perpendicular to the table with her hands holding her knees.  "Too hard?"
   There was a note of vulnerability in the question that he wasn't expecting.  But it was also clear, the way she was looking at him, that she wanted him to answer truthfully.  "I don't know," he said.  "What's too hard?"
   "All these other people have so much going on in their lives.  Their nights, their weekends.  Vacations, activities.  I've never been able to do that."
   "Which is why you're a partner."
   "But what am I missing?  What have I missed?"
   "Have you been happy doing it?"
   "Happy?"
   "Content.  Has it been worthwhile?  The work?"
   "Yes," she said.  "Maybe.  I suppose."
   "Then you may be better off than they are.  Many of them would prefer not to be here, and yet this is where they spend most of their time.  Percentagewise, maybe you're the happiest."

On Optimism

Apparently, I have now become one of those women who, upon reaching "a certain age", turns to self-help books.  

This is a bit of a joke, of course: while I've always eschewed that section of the book store, I recently picked up Learned Optimism by Martin Seligman, a professor at my alma mater.  I thought that one of the more interesting chapters discussed the biological argument for optimism:

In his acute, speculative book Optimism: The Biology of Hope Lionel Tiger argues that the human species has been selected by evolution because of its optimistic illusions about reality.  How else could a species have evolved that plants seeds in April and holds on through drought and famine until October, that stands up alone before charging mastodons and waves small sticks, that commences to build cathedrals that will take several lifetimes to complete?  The capacity to act on the hope that reality will turn out better than it usually does is behind such courageous, or foolhardy, behavior.

The Jane Austen Book Club

I didn't like the book, but I did like this passage:

Sylvia thought how all parents wanted an impossible life for their children -- happy beginning, happy middle, happy ending.  No plot of any kind.  What uninteresting people would result if parents got their way.

On Failure and Happiness

Randomly, I've been re-reading Geography of Bliss this week: a visiting cousin happened to leave his copy behind, which was a stroke of good luck, since my copy is currently 5000 miles away. I flipped the book open and found myself reading about Iceland, and specifically, what makes Icelandic people, on average, amongst the happiest in the world*:

"Having multiple identities (though not multiple personalities) is, [according to one Iceland resident] conducive to happiness. This runs counter to the prevailing belief in the United States and other western nations, where specialization is considered the highest good. Academics, doctors, and other professionals spend lifetimes learning more and more about less and less. In Iceland, people learn more and more about more and more."

And, by way of explaining how multiple identities are able to be cultivated:

"It's because of failure," says Larus, pushing his glasses against the bridge of his nose.
"Failure?"
"Yes, failure doesn't carry a stigma in Iceland. In fact, in a way, we admire failures."

This all intuitively makes sense to me. As an oversimplification:

If you're not worried about failing, you're more likely to try new things, which is likely to cause happiness.

(* Caveat: At least, according to Ruut Veenhoven and Eric Weiner. As pointed out by friends at brunch, there are too many unanswered questions/concerns about the methodology to rely too heavily on its accuracy. And who knows if Icelanders *are* happy? They seem to be having their own share of troubles these days.)

Ambition and Happiness

One more post on The Happiness Project. Going back to the idea of the relationship between happiness and work, how does ambition fit in? The author doesn't have any conclusion on the relationship between ambition and happiness, and discusses it briefly:

There's a common belief that happiness and ambition are incompatible. Many ambitious people I've known seem eager to claim that they aren't happy, almost as a way to emphasize their zeal, in echo of Andrew Carnegie's observation "Show me a contented man, and I'll show you a failure."

Studies show that many creative, influential people in the arts and public life score above average in "neuroticism" (i.e., they have a greater propensity to experience negative emotions); this discontent arguably urges them to higher achievement. Other studies, however, show that people tend to think more flexibly and with more complexity when they're feeling happy.

Quite frankly, I'm not sure how I feel about this. A number of my friends and peers are people that I would characterize as 'ambitious' (even if they wouldn't necessarily describe themselves that way). But does that mean that they'll always be unhappy, striving for something more?

Perhaps the key is to find happiness in the struggle for higher achievement?

Happiness is Tolerance?

I've been thinking about tolerance lately. I attended a thought-provoking lecture by Dr. Ken Jackson this weekend, in which he discussed the virtues of New York City. Jackson posited that New York was unique amongst international cities because it has such a multi-cultural, tolerant population.

I disagreed with a number of Dr. Jackson's arguments, but the lecture got me thinking about "Geography of Bliss" by Eric Weiner. In short: it's an NPR journalist's exploration of the research done by Dr. Ruut Veenhoven, who researches the happiest places in the world.

Weiner travels from country to country, trying to figure out why people are happy. The first chapter is about the Netherlands, which ranks as one of the happiest countries in the world. Here is Weiner's take on why the Dutch are so happy:

"Tolerance! This is the original "don't tread on me" nation... The Dutch will tolerate anything, even intolerance. In the past few decades they have welcomed, with open arms, immigrants from around the world, including those from nations that don't tolerate things like religious freedom and women who work or drive or show their faces. Dutch tolerance comes at a cost, as the murder of the filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist highlighted. But Veenhoven's research shoes that tolerant people tend to be happy."