I’ve asked this before: Are you happy?
Tough question. Sometime and somewhere in my youth I heard the line attributed to Tolstoy in the context of his novel Anna Karenina: "The surest way to make someone unhappy is to ask if they [sic.] are happy.”
See, right there I’ve probably made some people unhappy.
“What?” you ask. “How?”
As some would see it, the nitpicking. Someone, the antecedent, is singular; they is plural. “For gosh’s sake, Donald, those years of correcting papers are long behind you. Let them go. Get on with your life. What’s next, correcting the text I sent you?”
Sorry, I had to insert that “[sic.]” to avoid being accused of faulty grammatical number agreement. I realize this is a time when people are “identifying” as plural entities (i.e., “they”), but the logic of the language, if not the practice, is ingrained, has been ingrained since elementary school. Heck, my mother, an avid crossword, puzzle solver, and newspaper reader with only a ninth grade education (dropped out to help support the large family of siblings during the Depression), as I was saying, my mother constantly corrected my teenage grammar. Habit, then, to add “sic.” (“thus”) in deference to a career of correcting thousands of student papers and proofreading numerous graduate theses, dissertations, and reports. And, yes, I have corrected text messages, but I fear I’m losing the fight to emoji language. LOL. But I’ll admit that before my recent cataract surgery, I made numerous typographical errors in blogs and, by pressing "send" let Siri send off words I never chose—She’s more exasperating than I believe I am.
Have I just made you unhappy by the distraction? You were just thinking about happiness when I seemed to have changed the subject, but there’s s method here.
Distraction
With all our electronic media, we live in the Era of Ultimate Distraction. The obsession we have with news 24/7, podcasts, YouTube videos, and, well, everything else that intrudes our lives, all add to billions of people living either consciously or unconsciously by comparison and in distraction. Keeping up with the neighborhood Jones family, once a bit more compressed by localism, has been expanded to the world of Jones families. You might not care about the fashion that Kim Kardashian sports on some red carpet or the fashion that Bianca Censori did NOT wear, but it’s in your head, forced there as a distraction on your daily life. “And why don’t you care?” some gossip columnist or blogger might ask. “What else is worth knowing, save the goings on of the rich and famous, the stupid and reckless, the evil and political? Do any of these distractions and comparisons add to your happiness? Are you happy, for example, that Taylor Swift is happy, or rich, or dating? But even if you are indifferent, doesn’t the knowledge forced upon you by various media affect you? Just a little? Come on, now, be honest. It’s non-natural concupiscence to do a double take.
There you are, ready to watch a football game when abruptly the camera swings to the box where Taylor Swift sits or stands or claps and high fives her new friends. Geez. It is a game you want to see, not a display of a player’s girlfriend. Distraction.
But that’s just one small distraction in a life of distractions. How can any of us be truly happy in such a life? *
You Don’t Need Research for the Obvious, as Stanislav Said
Did you know that there are people out there whose energies have gone into discovering what makes people happy? Yep. Guess what they found out. Yep. Stuff you already know. Stuff like being generous and helping others, paying compliments in a pay-it-forward interaction, giving solace, and all that other “stuff.”
A gregarious species finds happiness in its gregariousness. The COVID period taught many that lesson. Isolation is the most devastating psychological condition for most people regardless of what they might say, such as, “I hate people.” Withdrawing is a symptom of depression, the antithesis of happiness. Well, then, if we are gregarious, can the social scientists tell us about happiness?
In his 1972 Social Sciences as Sorcery, * Stanislav Andreski challenged his colleagues by noting how they failed in their attempts to turn common knowledge into “science.” He noted that after wading through pages of formulae and esoteric language, we find that people are gregarious, a fact Stanislav says he can believe because his grandmother told him so. In Andreski’s words, “Pretentious and nebulous verbosity, interminable repetition of platitudes and disguised propaganda are the order of the day, while at least 95 per cent of research is indeed re-search for things that have been found long ago and many times since” (p. 11).
If the answer to the happiness question doesn’t come from the social scientists, does it lie in the work of psychologists? They’ve given it considerable attention. And again, the answer to that happiness question seems to lie in our obvious gregariousness, in charity, aid, and gratitude.
Nothing Profound Here
Sufficient numbers of wealthy people have committed suicide to indicate that riches are not a guarantee of happiness. Neither are fame and drugs. Certainly, we know that admiration for others can simply lead to our asking, “But what about me?”
“Have you considered philosophy, Donald?”
Great suggestion. I had a philosopher colleague who was Heideggerian existentialist. He focused on play as a fundamental human need. Or maybe it was play as a fundamental characteristic. Definitely, play plays a role in happiness. We’ve seen colts and calves frolicking, puppies and kitties tumbling, and full-grown dogs fetching sticks and balls (just part of their hunting instinct?). We played as children. We have grown into adults whose play can be as frivolous as a weekend softball game to serious gambling in Vegas. Is investing a form of play?
Then, of course, there’s that nasty withdrawal that results from bad knees that prevent one from running the bases, bad shoulders and elbows that prevent us from the courts of tennis and basketball, and insufficient funds that prevent us from sitting at a card table in Vegas. Such withdrawals are inevitable. So, as my late Heidegger expert might argue, there appears to be a type of positive play that contrasts with a type of negative play. The positive one uplifts. But as with all philosophies, the problem lies in practicality. If all we do is temporary, can the happiness derived from the sundry forms of play ever last a lifetime? And how, I might ask, does happiness square with the existential world of dread and anxiety. Is it a distraction from a lifetime of trauma, tragedy, losses, and failures. Is it a distraction from death? WAIT! Wait. Yes, I just had a thought. Is happiness the ultimate distraction?
Which, my dear reader, brings us back to our gregarious nature. People people are generally happier than Bah-Humbug Dickensian grouches. And that’s not a profound discovery. No one needs to tell you that. Fulfill your destiny to be a people person. Apparently, making others happy is the best way to become happy.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/magazine/happiness-research-studies-relationships.html
**Get the book in the library because it’s outrageously expensive to buy ($95 on eBay to $695 elsewhere) Oh! Library? That’s a building that stores thousands of books you can borrow for the price of a library card.
Tough question. Sometime and somewhere in my youth I heard the line attributed to Tolstoy in the context of his novel Anna Karenina: "The surest way to make someone unhappy is to ask if they [sic.] are happy.”
See, right there I’ve probably made some people unhappy.
“What?” you ask. “How?”
As some would see it, the nitpicking. Someone, the antecedent, is singular; they is plural. “For gosh’s sake, Donald, those years of correcting papers are long behind you. Let them go. Get on with your life. What’s next, correcting the text I sent you?”
Sorry, I had to insert that “[sic.]” to avoid being accused of faulty grammatical number agreement. I realize this is a time when people are “identifying” as plural entities (i.e., “they”), but the logic of the language, if not the practice, is ingrained, has been ingrained since elementary school. Heck, my mother, an avid crossword, puzzle solver, and newspaper reader with only a ninth grade education (dropped out to help support the large family of siblings during the Depression), as I was saying, my mother constantly corrected my teenage grammar. Habit, then, to add “sic.” (“thus”) in deference to a career of correcting thousands of student papers and proofreading numerous graduate theses, dissertations, and reports. And, yes, I have corrected text messages, but I fear I’m losing the fight to emoji language. LOL. But I’ll admit that before my recent cataract surgery, I made numerous typographical errors in blogs and, by pressing "send" let Siri send off words I never chose—She’s more exasperating than I believe I am.
Have I just made you unhappy by the distraction? You were just thinking about happiness when I seemed to have changed the subject, but there’s s method here.
Distraction
With all our electronic media, we live in the Era of Ultimate Distraction. The obsession we have with news 24/7, podcasts, YouTube videos, and, well, everything else that intrudes our lives, all add to billions of people living either consciously or unconsciously by comparison and in distraction. Keeping up with the neighborhood Jones family, once a bit more compressed by localism, has been expanded to the world of Jones families. You might not care about the fashion that Kim Kardashian sports on some red carpet or the fashion that Bianca Censori did NOT wear, but it’s in your head, forced there as a distraction on your daily life. “And why don’t you care?” some gossip columnist or blogger might ask. “What else is worth knowing, save the goings on of the rich and famous, the stupid and reckless, the evil and political? Do any of these distractions and comparisons add to your happiness? Are you happy, for example, that Taylor Swift is happy, or rich, or dating? But even if you are indifferent, doesn’t the knowledge forced upon you by various media affect you? Just a little? Come on, now, be honest. It’s non-natural concupiscence to do a double take.
There you are, ready to watch a football game when abruptly the camera swings to the box where Taylor Swift sits or stands or claps and high fives her new friends. Geez. It is a game you want to see, not a display of a player’s girlfriend. Distraction.
But that’s just one small distraction in a life of distractions. How can any of us be truly happy in such a life? *
You Don’t Need Research for the Obvious, as Stanislav Said
Did you know that there are people out there whose energies have gone into discovering what makes people happy? Yep. Guess what they found out. Yep. Stuff you already know. Stuff like being generous and helping others, paying compliments in a pay-it-forward interaction, giving solace, and all that other “stuff.”
A gregarious species finds happiness in its gregariousness. The COVID period taught many that lesson. Isolation is the most devastating psychological condition for most people regardless of what they might say, such as, “I hate people.” Withdrawing is a symptom of depression, the antithesis of happiness. Well, then, if we are gregarious, can the social scientists tell us about happiness?
In his 1972 Social Sciences as Sorcery, * Stanislav Andreski challenged his colleagues by noting how they failed in their attempts to turn common knowledge into “science.” He noted that after wading through pages of formulae and esoteric language, we find that people are gregarious, a fact Stanislav says he can believe because his grandmother told him so. In Andreski’s words, “Pretentious and nebulous verbosity, interminable repetition of platitudes and disguised propaganda are the order of the day, while at least 95 per cent of research is indeed re-search for things that have been found long ago and many times since” (p. 11).
If the answer to the happiness question doesn’t come from the social scientists, does it lie in the work of psychologists? They’ve given it considerable attention. And again, the answer to that happiness question seems to lie in our obvious gregariousness, in charity, aid, and gratitude.
Nothing Profound Here
Sufficient numbers of wealthy people have committed suicide to indicate that riches are not a guarantee of happiness. Neither are fame and drugs. Certainly, we know that admiration for others can simply lead to our asking, “But what about me?”
“Have you considered philosophy, Donald?”
Great suggestion. I had a philosopher colleague who was Heideggerian existentialist. He focused on play as a fundamental human need. Or maybe it was play as a fundamental characteristic. Definitely, play plays a role in happiness. We’ve seen colts and calves frolicking, puppies and kitties tumbling, and full-grown dogs fetching sticks and balls (just part of their hunting instinct?). We played as children. We have grown into adults whose play can be as frivolous as a weekend softball game to serious gambling in Vegas. Is investing a form of play?
Then, of course, there’s that nasty withdrawal that results from bad knees that prevent one from running the bases, bad shoulders and elbows that prevent us from the courts of tennis and basketball, and insufficient funds that prevent us from sitting at a card table in Vegas. Such withdrawals are inevitable. So, as my late Heidegger expert might argue, there appears to be a type of positive play that contrasts with a type of negative play. The positive one uplifts. But as with all philosophies, the problem lies in practicality. If all we do is temporary, can the happiness derived from the sundry forms of play ever last a lifetime? And how, I might ask, does happiness square with the existential world of dread and anxiety. Is it a distraction from a lifetime of trauma, tragedy, losses, and failures. Is it a distraction from death? WAIT! Wait. Yes, I just had a thought. Is happiness the ultimate distraction?
Which, my dear reader, brings us back to our gregarious nature. People people are generally happier than Bah-Humbug Dickensian grouches. And that’s not a profound discovery. No one needs to tell you that. Fulfill your destiny to be a people person. Apparently, making others happy is the best way to become happy.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/magazine/happiness-research-studies-relationships.html
**Get the book in the library because it’s outrageously expensive to buy ($95 on eBay to $695 elsewhere) Oh! Library? That’s a building that stores thousands of books you can borrow for the price of a library card.
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