My psychology class requires us to participate in psychological studies held on campus, and dictates 5% of our grade. The professor says this is to familiarize us with the practical world of psychology, but I think it's more likely just to make sure they can get enough participants for their studies.
One of the studies I signed up for only required me to fill out a seemingly endless survey, which asked about emotions and whether or not they were "good" or "valuable." The second half seemed to be dedicated more to discussing happiness, and what it entails or what brings someone happiness. I've been reflecting on happiness pretty frequently, and I think a reflection on happiness is something that can occupy a majority of one's thoughts quite easily.
Many of the questions in the survey were along the lines of, "To what extent does the following constitute happiness? Being able to buy things you want. Having authority over others. Being surrounded by people you care about. Etc." Many of these were a bit banal, or at least seemed so to me. Some others, however, inspired some critical thinking about what happiness is for me.
Happiness through Money
One thing that I really didn't understand until I started college and was finally (at least on a day-to-day basis) financially independent, is that money really doesn't bring happiness, to a point. Clearly having enough money to be comfortable is important, because if every day is a struggle for simple survival, happiness is likely going to be hard to come by. What I realized, though, is that the little extras that seemed so difficult to do without during high school when I wasn't working, e.g. the extra cash to go see a movie, or to buy a shirt that I really want, aren't really that necessary, firstly, and secondly, aren't that expensive even when only working around 15 hours a week at near minimum wage.
It's all about moderation and self control. Whenever my parents would take me shopping in high school or earlier, the goal was always to purchase enough clothing/school supplies/whatever to last me as long as possible, preferably through to the end of the year. Obviously this translated into quite large purchases and a lot of excitement, but I've realized that while this may be the only way to do this within a family for practicality, it's far from the best way in order to create or maintain happiness. Most can relate to the joy of getting something new, whether it's a gift or bought with your own money. One would think that this joy would increase as the amount or worth of the purchase(s) increases, but what I've found through personal experience is that it really doesn't. Yes, buying two shirts is more exciting than buying one shirt, but not 100% more exciting, and a third shirt wouldn't be 50% more exciting. I would pose that the excitement based on value or number of the purchase(s) is a logarithmic relationship, with the increase of excitement exponentially decreasing, eventually leveling out to where there would be no increase whatsoever.
With this in mind, the way to get the most happiness out of one's purchases would be to spread them out over time as evenly as possible, so that each individual item provides the most happiness it potentially can. This is also much more practical with budgeting, as one isn't spending large and inconsistent amounts of money and therefore has more financial security. I am aware, because this was the case within my own family, that going to the store every weekend for one pair of jeans or one package of markers isn't practical, and often school dictates when large purchases need to be made, but the way to extract as much happiness from buying things as possible would be to keep gifts and shopping excursions as consistent and evenly dispersed as possible.
Happiness through Others
Examining how one can get happiness from others is difficult for me. I've always been a very introverted person, so much of my time is spent alone doing quiet, reflective activities (such as this). At the same time, however, the primary source of any unhappiness is almost definitely myself, in that I've spent too much time mulling over something in my head and I've made myself depressed or paranoid or something along those lines. I was in a committed romantic relationship for the duration of high school, so typically if I was having trouble with this I would turn to my boyfriend for consolation or advice. After our relationship was over, however, the largest and most surprising difficulty was keeping myself happy without that close, romantic relationship. My solution to this at the beginning of this past summer was to surround myself friends as often as I could, so that I simply wouldn't have time to get stuck in my head and drag myself down. In this way I was gaining happiness from others, but really only because they were a distraction from my troubles.
There's also the happiness that comes from close relationships with other people. For me, this comes from being validated through the mutual respect within the relationship, as well as the peace of mind that comes with being able to be completely open and honest with another person, free from fear of judgment. The sense of connectedness also provides validation, in that you have x and y in common so the x and y parts of you are valid. There is too just a general sense of comfort that I think nearly everyone enjoys. So I think close relationships with other people, romantic or platonic, are also valid sources of happiness.
Happiness through One's Accomplishments
Many of the questions in the happiness portion of the survey discussed personal accomplishment as a source of happiness. For me this has always conflicted a bit with modesty, but I think generally it's easy to see how personal accomplishments can bring happiness. The feeling that one is working for a betterment of society in one way or another is followed by the idea that through that betterment, one leaves his mark and becomes immortal. I don't think I've ever met anyone that doesn't want this sort of immortality in one way or another, whether it's through an invention, children, education of others, or a new idea.
Here I want to digress into why I really want to stay in academia. A long time ago I stumbled upon this infographic that shows how education causes one to specialize more and more until one is able to finally add to the knowledge of humankind. While this encourages breaking out of the current academic system in order to find interconnections between subjects and ideally see "the real big picture," I think it properly illustrates why I want to get a PhD. It says that through academia one can't make those connections between subjects, but I feel like I do that all the time. I'll concede that I am getting a liberal arts education, but I think it's really the responsibility of the student to make these interconnections whether one is receiving a liberal arts education or not, as even liberal arts professors aren't going to make those connections for you.
For example, on the surface, or at least to those unfamiliar, my majors and minors all seem fairly unrelated, besides all being within arts and humanities. International studies, philosophy, and German, however, are all quite interconnected in my mind. Clearly, as Germany is another country one can see the relation there, but philosophy too frequently discusses politics, and one could argue that international studies is really only a contemporary example of philosophy. Additionally, much of classical and contemporary philosophy is written in German, so in order to gain a more thorough understanding of philosophy, and thus international studies, reading the texts in the original German is incredible useful.
So how does this, then, relate back to happiness? For me, adding to the knowledge of humankind through papers written as a tenured professor is the mark I want to make on the world, in addition to educating students and raising children. It isn't so much about immortality through fame, for me, as it is knowing that I brought something new to the table that can then inspire others to bring their own new ideas to the table. This for me would bring a great deal of happiness.
