We're a nation with a happiness fetish. A new book on happiness seems to roll off the presses every day. Millions of Americans are training for happiness by wearing "A Complaint Free World" bracelet because, they say, a global moratorium on griping will bring about happiness. Still others prefer the "Complain All You Want" bracelet, saying the emotional release of complaining is its own form of happiness.
And then there are those who seek happiness in the usual things: shopping, sex, food, drugs, alcohol, marriage, divorce, extreme sports, meditation and movies like "The Pursuit of Happyness. Our founding fathers were certainly sage: It is the pursuit of happiness that's an inalienable right, not the attainment of it.
Centuries after they penned these words in the Declaration of Independence, we're still in hot pursuit. And yet our self-reported levels of happiness have not increased since the s, even though there has been a national increase in wealth. We've got more wealth, more education and more time-saving technology since the days of the ancient Stoics and Epicureans, who also wrote tomes on how to be happy.
The modern pursuit of happiness, they say, is like running on a treadmill: Work hard and stay in the same spot. They compare the state of their material well-being to others, so they're already on the treadmill, never satisfied. Worse, a study by Harvard economist Erzo F. Luttmer showed that falling behind the Joneses triggers a blast of unhappiness. Authentic happiness takes work. And, like lush lawns, fancy cars and healthy marriages, it requires maintenance.
It's easier, experts say, to be unhappy than happy. That's absolute nonsense. I'm struck by this enormous new self-help genre on how to be happier, and then the crash-diet books.
