Happiness

Most of the people I know are happy much of the time and depressed only occasionally. However, in my work as a minister I have noticed that a few people seem happy always. They seem to see the glass as half full no matter what life throws at them. Simultaneously, I have noticed that a few people are chronic complainers. For them the glass is always half empty.

I remember a man and a woman in a church that I once served near a large city in the Midwest. The man was always positive, and the woman was always negative. One November the woman proposed that the church have a coat drive. She invited members of the congregation to bring any excess coats that they had in their homes to the church. She would take then to a homeless shelter in the city. The man offered to help. The day of the drive people brought to church far more coats than anyone had expected. I would guess that there were 150 coats, most of them in good condition. It seemed to me that no one, no matter how negative, could find anything wrong with this successful coat drive. However, as I was leaving the church that day, I heard the chronic complainer say to her always cheerful helper, "They brought too many coats! How do they expect me to fit all these coats into my car? This coat drive is a disaster!"

Why are some people happy and others unhappy? This week I read three books that try to answer this question. The first is by a professor of Psychology at Hope College in Michigan. Dr. David Myers has conducted research on what makes people happy. He defined happiness as "an enduring sense of positive well-being."

In 1992 Dr. Myers published the results of his investigation. He reported that most people feel that, if they had more money, they would be happier. However, Dr. Myers discovered that after we meet our basic needs of food, shelter, and reasonable security, money does not influence happiness. Once beyond poverty, further economic growth does not improve human morale. One of the many studies Dr. Myers gave as evidence was a survey of the forty-nine wealthiest Americans as listed by Forbes. As a group they turned out to be only slightly happier than the average person.

He argued that we are always comparing ourselves with others and always comparing our current experience with previous experiences. Our personal feelings of well-being hinge on how we are doing compared with our peers, our fellow workers, our friends, and our extended family. Your feelings are tied to how the experience you are having now compares with previous experiences, such as other sermons you have heard.

Ambrose Bierce defined happiness as "an agreeable sensation arising from contemplating the misery of another." Put more positively, happiness depends not on our status or wealth, but on our attitude. We can, Dr. Myers argues, be happier by striving to make our goals short term and sensible. We can choose our comparisons intentionally. He says this is why religious activities involving denial often give people a feeling of happiness and spiritual renewal. The Islamic practice of fasting during Ramadan is an example. For those of us who enjoy food, the month of fasting each day from sunrise to sun down could create a contrast between hunger and eating. This comparison would make us happier when we sit to eat. Another example is a silent retreat, so as the one held last week here at our church. For those of us who enjoy talking, the contrast between our normal life of and silent retreat, reminds us of the happiness of a simple conversation.

I was pleased that Dr. Myers found that people who attend a worship service at least once a month are happier. Survey after survey across North America and Europe revealed that religious people more often than nonreligious people reported feeling happy and satisfied with life. In one study religious people were twice as likely as non religious people to say they were "Very Happy." In America religious people are much less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol, to divorce or to be unhappily married, or to commit suicide. People who go to worship at least once a month are even physically healthier and live longer.

As I said, Dr. Myers published his findings in 1992. Around that time a man named Dr. David Lykken read an article about happiness by Dr. Myers in The Journal of the American Psychological Society. The article reported that subjective well-being, or happiness, is largely unrelated to income level or educational attainment, or social status or to whether a person is married or single. It occurred to Dr. Lykken that he already had in his computer at the University of Minnesota data on middle-aged people who are a representative sample of the population of Minnesota. More important, part of his sample was of twins.

Because of the location of the University of Minnesota, this research on twins has sometimes been called the twin city's twin studies.

Dr. Lykken and other researchers found that genetically identical twins separated at birth and raised by completely different parents were still remarkably similar. In one example (that was widely reported, the twins even appeared on the Tonight Show) two twins, who were raised apart, both had married and divorced women named Linda and then married women named Betty. Both had produced a son, one named James Alan and the other named James Allan. Both had dogs as youngsters, and each had named their dog, Toy. Each man had a woodworking shop in the basement. Each man had constructed a white lawn seat around the trunk of a tree in his back yard. Each man had the endearing habit of leaving little love notes around the house for their wife. Both men drove Chevrolets, chain-smoked Salem cigarettes, chewed their fingernails, drank miller light beer, and had worked as deputy sheriffs in their respective counties. Both enjoyed stock car racing, but disliked baseball. Although they had never met before the study, they had both taken a spring holiday on the Gulf Coast of Florida, driving down in their Chevrolets to the same quarter mile stretch of beach.

Dr. Lykken wondered if happiness also could be genetically determined. By the late 1990s he had studied 120 pairs of reared-apart twins and four sets of reared-apart triplets. He discovered that, if one twin on a happiness scale of one to ten rates himself as a six, there is an 80% chance that the other identical, reared apart twin, will also rate himself as a six on a happiness scale. In other words, his evidence suggests that our biology determines 80% of our happiness and that our environment determines 20%. This let Dr. Lykken to say. "It may be that trying to be happier is as futile as trying to be taller and therefore counterproductive." He said he regretted the statement when he saw it in print. What he should have said is that 80% of our happiness is biologically determined. The choices we make about our environment determine the other 20%. So to be happy we should keep exercising, keep developing and maintaining friendships, keep seeking out rewarding work, and keep coming to church.

Dr. Lykken reported his research in a book called Happiness the Nature and Nurture of Joy and Contentment, published in 1999.

A summary appeared in an airline magazine. A man named Stephen Braun, a medical writer who writes television documentaries on medical science and writes for magazines and newspapers, was idly flipping through the airline magazine to pass the time and a headline caught his attention that said, "Forget Money; Nothing Can Buy Happiness." The short article said that happiness is now a hot topic for investigation. C urrent research strongly suggests that how happy we are has more to do with our biology than with beauty, wealth, or education.

The idea that happiness has strong biological roots struck Stephen Braun as one of the most important and profound subjects that he could imagine. He thought to himself: "Every human being, no matter what culture, age educational attainment, or degree of physical and mental development wants to be happy." "What," he thought, "does it mean, if this ultimate goal is the product not of our many vaunted efforts, but of the unique constellation of our genes?"

The result of these questions is a third book on the topic of happiness, published two years ago, with the title The Science of Happiness, Unlocking the Mysteries of Mood. Mr. Braun visited Eli Lilly world headquarters in Indianapolis, Indiana, a new state-of-the art drug research facility paid for by the sales of a little capsule called Prozac. One of the most popular medications in the world, Prozac has brought in more than twenty-five billion dollars for Eli Lilly. However, the patent on Prozac expires December 2, 2003. [My source for this was a book published in 2000. After the sermon several persons pointed out that a judge ruled the Prozac patent was no longer in force as of August 2, 2001.] After the patent expires, other companies will flood the market with generic Prozac at a fraction of its current cost. So the scientists at Eli Lilly are working hard to create a new antidepressant that will work even better.

In the Brave New World of 2002 it appears that soon we can take a capsule or a tablet that makes us happy, in the same way we can buy eye glasses that let us see with 20/20 vision. With advances in our mapping and understanding of the brain and advances in constructing new drugs, true happy tablets that have few side effects will make the transition from science fiction to science fact.

For example, scientists now believe that happiness comes from the left side of the prefrontal cortex of the brain. People with higher than normal activity in their left prefrontal cortex experience more positive moods. One the other hand, people with more activity in their right prefrontal cortex are inwardly directed, withdrawn, shy, anxious, and depressed. A drug that stimulates electrical activity in our left prefrontal cortex might induce a more buoyant, outgoing optimistic attitude. Just when this new mapping of the brain is taking place, researchers are discovering more about how anti-depression drugs work. Apparently they simulate the brain to grow new "dendritic" branches in the brain. The result is better electrical conduction and an increase in the electrical activity of the neural networks underlying mood, emotional response, and perhaps happiness.

The danger Mr. Braun sees in this is that as these anti-depression drugs get better and better, the drug companies, motivated to pay back the enormous costs of drug research, will encourage us to believe that we should treat every feeling of unhappiness with a tablet or a capsule. The problem with this is that our emotions, both pleasant and unpleasant, evolved to the way they are today because they served useful functions in the past. According to Darwinian psychiatry, depressive moods are to our mental life what pain is to our physical life. Depressive moods are telling us that something is wrong with our relationships, our work, or another aspect of our life. The decrease in energy and the withdrawal from social interaction may have evolved from a time when our distant ancestors needed to be deterred from pursuing hopeless goals such as chasing after game that is too fast, or attempting to mate with a person who is not a good match, or trying to achieve dominance over a rival who is physically superior. The depressive response would prevent further wasted energy, and encourage a reconsideration of goals. Completely wiping out our capacity for depression with drugs could be as dangerous as wiping out our capacity to feel pain.

I think Stephen Braun has a point here. He is saying that if we fall and cut ourselves, the pain we feel is useful in encouraging us to stop the bleeding, clean the cut, and get stitches. In the same way depression can be useful in encouraging us to care for ourselves. However, Mr. Braun is not a pharmacological Calvinist. He is not suggesting that we should never use antidepressants. If we fall and cut ourselves, few of us would argue that we should not use a painkiller and make it easier for ourselves while the doctor sews us up. In the same way using antidepressants is appropriate while we do what we can to try to understand and fix the issues that caused the depression. If we are born with poor eyesight, using corrective lenses to improve our vision is appropriate. In the same way, if we are born seriously depressed, using medications to treat depression is appropriate.

So scientists have made three major discoveries regarding happiness in the last ten years.

• We now have hard scientific evidence that after we meet our basic needs for shelter, food and security, more money does not buy happiness. We can increase our happiness by cultivating our friendships, by physical exercise, by getting enough sleep, by doing meaningful work, and by going to religious services. Nevertheless, after meeting our basic needs neither more money nor more status will make us happy.
• We now have hard scientific evidence that our genetic make- up, partly determines happiness and depression by our biology. At least one researcher believes that our happiness is 80 percent determined by our biology and 20% determined by how we chose to live our lives.
• And we know that the existing anti-depressants are enormously popular, and that much more effective ones will be available in the next few years. Therefore if we are seriously depressed we should seek medical help.

However, we should not expect to be happy always. For happiness cannot exist without a context, a background, and a contrasting field.

If we can remember a time when we were hungry, then we are more likely feel happy eating a meal.

If we can remember the pain of hard work or of a long hike, then we are more likely to feel happy when we lay down in a soft bed to rest.

If we can remember the struggles along our path, then we are more likely to feel happy when we achieve a goal that we have set out to accomplish.

If we can remember the silence, then we are more likely to feel happy when we hear the sound of beautiful music.

And if we can remember a time when we were lonely, then, we are more likely to feel happy when we come into a community of friends such as we have here today.

Cedar Lane Unitarian Universalist Church
9601 Cedar Lane, Bethesda, Maryland 20814-4099
Tel: 301-493-8300    Fax: 301-897-5713
e-mail: office@CedarLane.org
Sunday Services at 9 and 11 a.m.
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