It was an exciting shift for psychology, one that the public immediately responded to. Major media outlets clamored to cover the new research. Soon, entrepreneurs began monetizing it, founding start-ups and programming apps to help ordinary people implement the field’s findings. They were followed by a deluge of celebrities, personal coaches, and motivational speakers, all eager to share the gospel of happiness. According to Psychology Today, in 2000, the number of books published about happiness was a modest fifty. In 2008, that number had skyrocketed to 4,000. Of course, people have always been interested in the pursuit of happiness, but all that attention has made an impact: since the mid-2000s, the interest in happiness, as measured by Google searches, has tripled. “The shortcut to anything you want in your life,” writes author Rhonda Byrne in her bestselling 2006 book The Secret, “is to BE and FEEL happy now!”
And yet, there is a major problem with the happiness frenzy: it has failed to deliver on its promise. Though the happiness industry continues to grow, as a society, we’re more miserable than ever. Indeed, social scientists have uncovered a sad irony—chasing happiness actually makes people unhappy.
That fact would come as no surprise to students of the humanistic tradition. Philosophers have long questioned the value of happiness alone. “It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied,” wrote the nineteenth-century philosopher John Stuart Mill. To that, the twentieth-century Harvard philosopher Robert Nozick added: “And although it might be best of all to be Socrates satisfied, having both happiness and depth, we would give up some happiness in order to gain the depth.”
Nozick was a happiness skeptic. He devised a thought experiment to emphasize his point. Imagine, Nozick said, that you could live in a tank that would “give you any experience you desired.” It sounds like something out of The Matrix: “Superduper neuropsychologists could stimulate your brain so that you would think and feel you were writing a great novel, or making a friend, or reading an interesting book. All the time you would be floating in a tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.” He then asks, “Should you plug into this machine for life, preprogramming your life’s experiences?”
If happiness is truly life’s end goal, most people would choose to feel happy in the tank. It would be an easy life, where trauma, sadness, and loss are switched off—forever. You could always feel good, maybe even important. Every now and then, you could exit the tank and decide which new experiences you wanted programmed into your head. If you are torn or distressed over the decision to plug in, you shouldn’t be. “What’s a few moments of distress,” Nozick asks, “compared to a lifetime of bliss (if that’s what you choose), and why feel any distress at all if your decision is the best one?”
If you choose to live in the tank and feel happy moment to moment, for all the moments of your life, are you living a good life? Is that the life that you would choose for yourself—for your children? If we report that happiness is our main value in life, as a majority of us do, then wouldn’t life in the tank satisfy all of our desires?
It should. Yet most people would say no to a life of feeling good in the tank. The question is, why? The reason we recoil from the idea of life in the tank, according to Nozick, is that the happiness we find there is empty and unearned. You may feel happy in the tank, but you have no real reason to be happy. You may feel good, but your life isn’t actually good. A person “floating in the tank,” as Nozick puts it, is “an indeterminate blob.” He has no identity, no projects and goals to give his life value. “We care about more than just how things feel to us from the inside,” Nozick concludes. “There is more to life than feeling happy.”
—
Before his death in 2002, Nozick had worked with Martin Seligman and others to shape the goals and vision of positive psychology. Early on, they recognized that the happiness-focused research would be alluring and media-friendly, and they wanted to consciously avoid letting the field become what Seligman called “happiology.” Instead, their mission was to shed the light of science on how people can lead deep and fulfilling lives. And over the last few years, that’s precisely what more and more researchers have been doing. They have been looking beyond happiness in their search for what makes life worth living. One of their chief findings has been that there is a distinction between a happy life and a meaningful life.
This distinction has a long history in philosophy, which for thousands of years has recognized two paths to the good life. The first is hedonia, or what we today call happiness, following in the footsteps of Sigmund Freud. Human beings, he wrote, “strive after happiness; they want to become happy and to remain so”—and this “pleasure principle,” as he called it, is what “decides the purpose of life” for most people. The ancient Greek philosopher Aristippus, a student of Socrates, considered the pursuit of hedonia the key to living well. “The art of life,” Aristippus wrote, “lies in taking pleasures as they pass, and the keenest pleasures are not intellectual, nor are they always moral.’ ’ Several decades later, Epicurus popularized a somewhat similar idea, arguing that the good life is found in pleasure, which he defined as the absence of bodily and mental pain, such as anxiety. This idea waned through the Middle Ages, but it saw a resurgence in popularity during the eighteenth century with Jeremy Bentham, the founder of utilitarianism. Bentham believed the pursuit of pleasure was our central driving force. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure,” he famously wrote: “It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”
In line with this tradition, many psychologists today define happiness as a positive mental and emotional state. One tool commonly used in social science research to help assess happiness, for example, asks an individual to reflect on how often he feels positive emotions like pride, enthusiasm, and attentiveness versus how often he feels negative ones like fear, nervousness, and shame. The higher your ratio of positive to negative emotions, the happier you are.
But our feelings, of course, are fleeting. And as Nozick’s thought experiment revealed, they’re not everything. We may delight in reading the tabloids and feel stressed while taking care of a sick relative, but most of us would agree that the latter activity is more significant. It might not feel good in the moment, but if we skipped out on it, we’d later regret that decision. In other words, it’s worth doing because it’s meaningful.
Meaning is the other path to the good life, and it’s best understood by turning to the Greek philosopher Aristotle and his concept of eudaimonia, the ancient Greek word for “human flourishing.” Eudaimonia often gets translated as “happiness,” and so Aristotle is often credited with saying that happiness is the highest good and chief goal of our lives. But Aristotle actually had pretty harsh words for those who pursued pleasure and “the life of enjoyment.” He called them “slavish” and “vulgar,” arguing that the feel-good route to the good life that he believed “most men” pursue is more “suitable to beasts” than to human beings.
To Aristotle, eudaimonia is not a fleeting positive emotion. Rather, it is something you do. Leading a eudaimonic life, Aristotle argued, requires cultivating the best qualities within you both morally and intellectually and living up to your potential. It is an active life, a life in which you do your job and contribute to society, a life in which you are involved in your community, a life, above all, in which you realize your potential, rather than squander your talents.
Psychologists have picked up on Aristotle’s distinction. If hedonia is defined as “feeling good,” they argue, then eudaimonia is defined as “being and doing good”—and as “seeking to use and develop the best in oneself” in a way that fits with “one’s deeper principles.” It is a life of good character. And it pays dividends. As three scholars put it, “The more directly one aims to maximize pleasure and avoid pain, the more likely one is to produce instead a life bereft of depth, meaning, a
nd community.” But those who choose to pursue meaning ultimately live fuller—and happier—lives.
It’s difficult, of course, to measure a concept like meaning in the lab, but, according to psychologists, when people say that their lives have meaning, it’s because three conditions have been satisfied: they evaluate their lives as significant and worthwhile—as part of something bigger; they believe their lives make sense; and they feel their lives are driven by a sense of purpose. Still, some social scientists are skeptical that happiness and meaning are distinct from each other at all. Yet research suggests that the meaningful life and the happy life can’t be conflated so easily. The differences between the two were revealed in a study from 2013, in which a team of psychologists led by Florida State University’s Roy Baumeister asked nearly 400 Americans aged 18 to 78 whether they were happy and whether they thought their lives were meaningful. The social scientists examined their responses alongside other variables, like their stress levels and spending patterns, and whether or not they had children. What they discovered is that while the meaningful life and the happy life overlap in certain ways and “feed off each other,” they “have some substantially different roots.”
Baumeister and his team found that the happy life is an easy life, one in which we feel good much of the time and experience little stress or worry. It was also associated with good physical health and the ability to buy the things that we need and want. So far, so expected. What was surprising, however, was that the pursuit of happiness was linked to selfish behavior—being a “taker” rather than a “giver.”
“Happiness without meaning,” the researchers wrote, “characterizes a relatively shallow, self-absorbed or even selfish life, in which things go well, needs and desires are easily satisfied, and difficult or taxing entanglements are avoided.”
Leading a meaningful life, by contrast, corresponded with being a “giver,” and its defining feature was connecting and contributing to something beyond the self. Having more meaning in life was correlated with activities like buying presents for others, taking care of children, and even arguing, which researchers said was an indication of having convictions and ideals you are willing to fight for. Because these activities require investing in something bigger, the meaningful life was linked to higher levels of worrying, stress, and anxiety than the happy life. Having children, for instance, was a hallmark of the meaningful life, but it has been famously associated with lower levels of happiness, a finding that held true for the parents in this study.
Meaning and happiness, in other words, can be at odds. Yet research has shown that meaningful endeavors can also give rise to a deeper form of well-being down the road. That was the conclusion of a 2010 study by Veronika Huta of the University of Ottawa and Richard Ryan of the University of Rochester. Huta and Ryan instructed a group of college students to pursue either meaning or happiness over a ten-day period by doing at least one thing each day to increase eudaimonia or hedonia, respectively. At the end of each day, the study participants reported back to the researchers about the activities they’d chosen to undertake. Some of the most popular ones reported by students in the meaning condition included forgiving a friend, studying, thinking about one’s values, and helping or cheering up another person. Those in the happiness condition, by contrast, listed activities like sleeping in, playing games, going shopping, and eating sweets.
After the study’s completion, the researchers checked in with the participants to see how it had affected their well-being. What they found was that students in the happiness condition experienced more positive feelings, and fewer negative ones, immediately after the study. But three months later, the mood boost had faded. The second group of students—those who focused on meaning—did not feel as happy right after the experiment, though they did rate their lives as more meaningful. Yet three months later, the picture was different. The students who had pursued meaning said they felt more “enriched,” “inspired,” and “part of something greater than myself.” They also reported fewer negative moods. Over the long term, it seemed, pursuing meaning actually boosted psychological health.
The philosopher John Stuart Mill wouldn’t have been surprised. “Those only are happy,” he wrote, “who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way.”
—
Psychologists like Baumeister and Huta are part of a growing new movement, one that is fundamentally reshaping our understanding of the good life. Their work shows that the search for meaning is far more fulfilling than the pursuit of personal happiness, and it reveals how people can go about finding meaning in their lives. Through their studies, they’re seeking to answer big questions: Does each person have to find meaning on his or her own, or are there certain universal sources of meaning that we can all lean on? Why are people in some cultures and communities more likely to consider their lives meaningful than those in others? How does living a meaningful life affect our health? How do we—and indeed can we—find meaning in the face of death?
Their research reflects a broader shift in our culture. Across the country—and across the world—educators, business leaders, doctors, politicians, and ordinary people are beginning to turn away from the gospel of happiness and focus on meaning. As I dug deeper into the psychological research, I began to seek these people out. In the pages ahead, I will introduce you to some of these remarkable individuals. We will meet a group of medieval enthusiasts who find fulfillment in their idiosyncratic community. We will hear from a zookeeper about what gives her life purpose. We will learn how a paraplegic used a traumatic experience to redefine his identity. We will even follow a former astronaut into space, where he found his true calling.
Some of their stories are ordinary. Others are extraordinary. But as I followed these seekers on their journeys, I found that their lives all had some important qualities in common, offering an insight that the research is now confirming: there are sources of meaning all around us, and by tapping into them, we can all lead richer and more satisfying lives—and help others do the same. This book will reveal what those sources of meaning are and how we can harness them to give our lives depth. Along the way, we’ll learn about the benefits of living meaningfully—for ourselves, and for our schools, workplaces, and society at large.
As I interviewed researchers and chased stories of people searching for and finding meaning, I was reminded at every turn of the Sufis who first set me on this journey. More often than not, these paragons of meaning were living humble lives. Many of them had struggled in their pursuit of meaning. Yet their primary goal was making the world better for others. A great Sufi once said that if a darvish takes only the first step on the path of loving-kindness and goes no farther, then he has contributed to humanity by devoting himself to others—and it’s the same with those focused on living meaningful lives. They transform the world, in big and small ways, through their pursuit of noble goals and ideals.
Indeed, just as new scientific findings have brought us back to the wisdom of the humanities, writing this book has affirmed the lessons I learned as a child living in the Sufi meetinghouse. Though the darvishes led seemingly normal lives as lawyers, construction workers, engineers, and parents, they adopted a meaning mindset that imbued everything they did with significance—whether it was helping to clean up a dinner spread or singing the poetry of Rumi and Attar and living by its wisdom. For the darvishes, the pursuit of personal happiness was completely beside the point. Rather, they focused constantly on how they could make themselves useful to others, how they could help other people feel happier and more whole, and how they could connect to something larger. They crafted lives that mattered—which leaves just one question for the rest of us: How can we do the same?
On a fall day in 1930, the historian and philosopher Will Durant was raking leaves
in the yard of his home in Lake Hill, New York, when a well-dressed man walked up to him. The man told Durant that he was planning to commit suicide unless the popular philosopher could give him “one good reason” to live.
Shocked, Durant attempted to respond in a way that would bring the man comfort—but his response was uninspired: “I bade him get a job—but he had one; to eat a good meal—but he was not hungry; he left visibly unmoved by my arguments.”
Durant, a writer and intellectual who died in 1981 at the age of 96, is best known for his books that brought philosophy and history to the public. The Story of Philosophy, published in 1926, became a bestseller, and his multivolume work The Story of Civilization, cowritten with his wife, Ariel Durant, over the course of forty years, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for its tenth volume, Rousseau and Revolution. During his life, Durant was a thinker with far-ranging interests. He wrote fluently about literature, religion, and politics, and in 1977, he received one of the highest honors bestowed by the U.S. government on a civilian, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Durant was raised Catholic, attended a Jesuit academy, and planned to join the priesthood. But in college, he became an atheist after he read the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, whose ideas “melted” his “inherited theology.” For many years following his loss of religious faith, he “brooded” over the question of meaning, but never found a satisfactory answer to it. An agnostic and empirically minded philosopher, Durant later came to see that he was unsure of what gives people a reason to go on living even when they despair. This wise man of his time could not offer a compelling answer to the suicidal man who came to him in 1930—the year after the stock market crash that inaugurated the Great Depression.
The Power of Meaning Page 2
