Happy going or not?

We have had several friends from the Netherlands, from the south of Sweden and local friends visiting us in the last few weeks. It is great to have friends visiting from all over, with different cultural backgrounds or different views on life and it gives us input in our daily lives and sometimes it challenges our views. Many guests who come from big cities and busy areas comment on the slow pace, the smallness of things here, the lack of traffic jams and sometimes the lack of things to do (if you are not into sports or nature).

The other night we sat down with some friends, had a glass of wine and somehow the discussion came to focus around what we want with our lives, where we see ourselves in a few years time and what makes us happy. Being 4 adults, two who have suffered a burn out, one recently divorced and one not sure what she wants in life it is safe to say that we did not get to a complete answer. The idea of what makes us happy stayed in my head for a few days and I started thinking about an article I read a while ago that stated that statistically (on a global scale) we are the least happy at the age of 46 (but in Switzerland you hit bottom at 35 already).

If this is true and if there is a U-bend happiness curve (as David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College believes) I will get less happy in the coming years but after 46 life will look brighter. We seem to start out as happy going individuals but due to different aspects of life (wanting to achieve high goals, finding a perfect partner, having kids, fulfilling our individual needs etc.) we get more and more miserable. We statistically hit bottom at 46 but then, somewhere along the way we start getting happier again. According to a writer at the Economist the reason for this could be that we give up the struggle (sounds sad, doesn’t it?) or that we are better suited to deal with trouble as we grow older. We have learnt our life lesson well. What does this actually mean? That we have to fail to feel good again? That we have to throw in the towel and give up if we want to feel happy?

I don´t know but for fun I Goggled happiness and found out some interesting statistics. I you are a happy American you probably live in Hawaii (according to Helathways well-being index, 2011). Actually all American states that score high on happiness are places with a low population or as journalist Carol Bengle Gilbert says; “These states leave the alarming impression that Americans are happiest when they don´t have to deal with another. Are the happiest states the least social?” I crossed checked this comment with The World Map of Happiness which lists the 20 most happy countries in the world and the top 5 countries are the following; Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Iceland and the Bahamas. Sweden is on 7th place. Well, all the top positions are held by small countries with a relatively small population. And, with this not whatsoever statistical analysis I can see many favorable aspects for my own little hometown. We are few people, spread out on a large area, with a high percentage married people (statistically makes you happier) and we are socially active in many sports clubs (also indicates an increased happiness). Do we actually know how happy we are?

Feeling happy or satisfied with life is obviously a personal feeling difficult to quantify or to measure. How do I compare my happiness to someone else and is it true, as some say, that we bother too much about happiness nowadays and expect too much out of life? More and more countries are focusing on learning more about happiness (through extensive research) as happy people produce better output, keeps a country stable, reduce crime, keeps healthcare costs at a lower level etc. Unhappy people are more often sick, feel more trapped and see fewer possibilities and sometimes you almost get the feeling that we are worse off now than in the past. I doubt that this is true. We live in a time where self-reflection is an everyday commodity and where “help yourself books” keeps our bookshelves filled. We talk about happiness; we reflect about it in books, films, on the net, with our friends etc. but are probably not less happy than 100 years ago. And, considering that we did not live this long 100 years ago the u-bent happiness curve might have looked different. Did you hit bottom at 36 instead of today’s 46? Do we have our mid-life crises later and later in life as we live longer and what defines the difficult moments? And how much of our happiness is defined by the culture we live in as we see different “bottoms” in different countries.

Well, these questions have no simple answers. I like to believe that we create our own happiness as we go along and sometimes it is easier and sometimes more difficult. Maybe because it is almost impossible to define what happiness is and what we have to do to experience it (as it changes over time). So, for me and my friends we kind of got to the conclusion that if the u-bent happiness curve is true we have already been at the bottom and are now heading for a bright future (despite having several years left to 46). I hope you are too!