The Happiness Project (16 page)
Read The Happiness Project Online
Authors: Gretchen Rubin
On the last day of April, as I did at the end of every month, I paused to evaluate my progress before gearing up for the next month’s resolutions. Soul-searching seems like an activity that should be undertaken by a woodland stream or at least in a quiet room, but this particular session of self-evaluation took place as I was riding the subway downtown. As we slowly lurched through the local stops, I asked myself, “Well, am I feeling any happier? Am I
really
?”
I happened to be in a blue mood that morning. “If I’m honest with myself,” I thought dejectedly, “the fact is, I’m no different. Same old Gretchen, no better and no worse, nothing new and improved. I’ve been telling myself I’m happier, but I haven’t really changed.” Studies show that people who go to psychotherapy or to programs to lose weight, stop smoking, start exercising, or whatever usually believe they’ve changed a lot but in fact show only a modest benefit; apparently, after spending so much money, time, and effort, people think, “Wow, I
must
have changed for the better,” even if they haven’t changed that much. “That’s probably why
I’ve
been telling myself that I’m happier,” I thought, “when in fact my project hasn’t been working at all.” As I got off the subway, I couldn’t shake my feelings of futility and gloom.
After a two-hour meeting, I was back on the subway and headed home in a more cheerful mood (thus confirming happiness research that shows that people get a mood boost from contact with others). I resumed my
argument with myself. “Am I happier?” This time my answer was a little different: “
No,
but also
yes.
” True, my fundamental nature hadn’t changed. It wasn’t realistic to think that I could bring about that kind of change in just four months or even by the end of the year. Yet something had changed. What?
Finally I put my finger on it. In moments when I was in “neutral,” as when riding the subway, I was the same familiar Gretchen. The difference was that, although my nature was unchanged, I had more happiness in my life each day; my resolutions had added more sources of fun, engagement, and satisfaction and had also eliminated some significant sources of bad feelings, such as guilt and anger. Through my actions, I was successfully pushing myself to the high end of my inborn happiness range.
I could tell that my happier mood affected the household atmosphere. It’s true that “if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy,” and it’s also true that “if Daddy ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” and that “you’re only as happy as your least happy child.” Each member of a family picks up and reflects everyone else’s emotions—but of course I could change no one’s actions except my own.
On a less sublime note, after evaluating my progress I decided to give up wearing the pedometer. It had been a useful exercise, but I was getting tired of strapping it to my waistband every morning, and I’d almost dropped it in the toilet several times. The pedometer had served its purpose of helping me to evaluate and improve my walking habits, and it was time to put it into retirement.
Find more fun.
Take time to be silly.
Go off the path.
Start a collection.
M
ay, the beginning of springtime, seemed like the right time to
work
on my
play
—that is, the activities I did in my free time because I wanted to do them, for their own sake, for my own reasons, and not for money or ambition. In an irony that didn’t escape me, I prepared to work doggedly at fun and to be serious about joking around.
The writer Jean Stafford scoffed, “Happy people don’t need to have fun,” but in fact, studies show that the absence of feeling bad isn’t enough to make you happy; you must strive to find sources of feeling good. One way to feel good is to make time for play—which researchers define as an activity that’s very
satisfying, has no economic significance, doesn’t create social harm, and doesn’t necessarily lead to praise or recognition. Research shows that regularly having fun is a key factor in having a happy life; people who have fun are twenty times as likely to feel happy.
I had two goals for the month: I wanted to have more fun, and I wanted to use my leisure to cultivate my creativity. Play wasn’t merely idle time but an opportunity to experiment with new interests and to draw closer to other people.
I was very fortunate that the activities that I did for work were, for the most part, versions of the same activities that I did for fun. There were many persuasive arguments against taking busman’s holidays, but I always wanted to do the same things on the weekend that I did during the week. I knew exactly what the photographer Edward Weston meant when he noted in his daybook that he’d spent the day in “a holiday of work, but work which was play.”
As I saw in March, novelty is an important source of happiness; it’s also an important element in creativity. I tend to stick to the familiar, so I wanted to push myself toward new experiences and new ideas that attracted me.
I needed to take my leisure more seriously. I’d always assumed that having fun was something in my life that would flow naturally, so I didn’t think about shaping it or getting the most out of it—but although having fun sounded simple, it wasn’t. When I asked my blog readers about their ideas about fun, several readers responded.
M
aking things is something that I get fun out of. I’m a great fan of crafts, but I find the fun is far increased when I am making a present for someone. This Christmas, I have a pretty ambitious project in mind for the boyfriend, but I know he’ll love it and the challenge is giving me so much fun, as well as the anticipation that he’ll appreciate it. Coming up with ideas myself is an intellectual challenge, followed by the
mechanically creative challenge of realising them, and this is a combination which I find very fulfilling and fun.
Reading overseas blogs, including yours of course, is fun to me. Every weekday morning I read them over coffee (since I live in the Far East, they are updated while I’m asleep). Needless to say, it helps to learn foreign language (in my case, English). But what I find fun most is to find a person who has a similar taste, way of thinking, etc., in a different culture.
Books are a great source of joy and fun for me—collecting them, reading them, looking them up on the internet. It gives me great pleasure to open a “new” book whether it was previously used or fresh off the press.
My weekly Latin class is a whole lot of fun for me. I have been meeting for four years now with a few other individuals to sight-read Latin, review grammar, and talk about whatever comes up in conversation. I fell in love with the Latin language in high school and never had the opportunity to pursue further study until now. And that has made me very, very happy.
What’s fun for me? ANYTHING creative…anything! The BEST fun is the kind of coloring book that has a very complex picture on only one side of the page…and a new box of beautifully sharpened colored pencils. Next best…a piece of stamped material and the colored cotton floss required to complete the embroidery.
Here’s a tough one: I do not find it particularly fun to sit on the floor and play with my children with their toys. I love cooking with them, reading to them, talking to them, watching movies with them, going on walks with them, and taking them to age-appropriate places. My idea of a really good time is to pick my five-year-old up from school and go out for a snack. But I don’t find playing with Polly Pockets (with the older one) or Little People (with the younger one) particularly fun. And I feel very guilty about that at times.
For me fun is…debating, tinkering (e.g., inside the guts of hardware or software), building (hardware/software), reading blogs (all kinds), telling my kids stories of my youth.
Seriously, I have come to the realisation that I don’t have fun anymore. I have got to do something about this before I become a glum, boring, sad person!
Like that last commenter, I wanted to bring more fun into my life.
FIND MORE FUN.
When I thought about fun, I realized to my surprise that I didn’t have a good sense of what I found fun. Only recently had I grasped one of my most important Secrets of Adulthood: just because something was fun for someone else didn’t mean it was fun for
me
—and vice versa. There are many things that other people enjoy that I don’t.
I love the
idea
of playing chess, going to a lecture on international markets, doing crossword puzzles, getting a pedicure, eating dinner at a hot new restaurant, or having a subscription to the opera or season tickets to the Knicks. I can see exactly why other people enjoy these activities. I wish I enjoyed them. But I don’t. Some blog readers experienced the same tension:
O
ver the last few years, I’ve started figuring out what I really find fun. I realized I had a lot of stuff and activities in my life that I didn’t enjoy. These were things that others find fun, but they just weren’t to me. Accepting that what others find fun won’t necessarily be fun for me felt like a huge breakthrough. It’s hard enough to stay in touch with what’s fun for you without thinking that you should like something that others find fun. For instance, I enjoy movies, but there are cheaper activities that I enjoy much more. So, I have gradually cut them out of my life. I will go
occasionally with a friend, but I don’t watch nearly as many as I used to and I used to watch a couple a week.
My husband posed this question to me a year or so ago—“What do you find fun?” and I had to think long and hard about it. Most of my pleasures are quiet and solitary. I love to be absorbed in a good book; I love to do needlework; I love to make jewelry. I’ve given myself permission to say that that’s okay. I do love to play board games, though, especially with my children.
My understanding of fun is definitely not the same as other people’s. I enjoy solitary, quiet things. Even the sports I enjoy are quiet ones. Reading is fun, both books and blogs. Computer programming is fun. Diving and mountain climbing are fun. Yoga is fun. Shopping, on the other hand, which girls are supposed to enjoy, is definitely NOT fun. Parties are generally not fun either.
I tended to overrate the fun activities that I didn’t do and underrate my own inclinations. I felt like the things that other people enjoyed were more valuable, or more cultured…more, well,
legitimate.
But now it was time to “Be Gretchen.” I needed to acknowledge to myself what I enjoyed, not what I
wished
I enjoyed. If something was really fun for me, it would pass this test: I looked forward to it; I found it energizing, not draining; and I didn’t feel guilty about it later.
I told a friend about my quest, and she said, “Gosh, if I had something fun I wanted to do, I’d feel frustrated, because I wouldn’t have time for it. I don’t want to add anything else to my plate.” This struck me as a bleak view—but it was something I might well have said myself in the past. My happiness project had shown me that I was better off saying “I have plenty of time to have fun!”
But what, exactly, did I find fun? What did I
want
to do? I couldn’t think of much. Well, there was one thing: I really loved reading children’s
literature. I’ve never quite figured out what I get from children’s literature that I don’t get from adult literature, but there’s something. The difference between novels for adults and novels for children isn’t merely a matter of cover design, bookstore placement, and the age of the protagonist. It’s a certain quality of atmosphere.
Children’s literature often deals openly with the most transcendent themes, such as the battle between good and evil and the supreme power of love. These books don’t gloss over the horror and fascination of evil, but in the end, in even the most realistic novels, good triumphs. Novelists for adults don’t usually write that way; perhaps they fear being seen as sentimental or priggish or simplistic. Instead, they focus on guilt, hypocrisy, the perversion of good intentions, the cruel workings of fate, social criticism, the slipperiness of language, the inevitability of death, sexual passion, unjust accusation, and the like. These are grand literary themes. Yet I also find it enormously satisfying to see good prevail over evil, to see virtue vindicated and wrongdoing punished. I love didactic writing, whether by Tolstoy or Madeleine L’Engle.
What’s more, in keeping with this good-versus-evil worldview, children’s literature often plunges a reader into a world of archetypes. Certain images have a queer power to excite the imagination, and children’s literature uses them with brilliant effect. Books such as
Peter Pan, The Golden Compass,
and
The Blue Bird
operate on a symbolic level and are penetrated with meanings that can’t be fully worked out. Adult novels do sometimes have this atmosphere, but it’s much rarer. I love to return to the world of stark good and evil, of talking animals and fulfilled prophecies.
But my passionate interest in kidlit didn’t fit with my ideas of what I wished I were like; it wasn’t grown up enough. I wanted to be interested in serious literature, constitutional law, the economy, art, and other adult subjects. And I
am
interested in those topics, but I somehow felt embarrassed by my love of J. R. R. Tolkien, E. L. Konigsberg, and Elizabeth Enright. I repressed this side of my personality to such a degree that when one of
the Harry Potter books came out, I didn’t buy it for several days. I’d fooled even myself into thinking that I didn’t care.