I've been meaning to blog about this someday just because it's something I weirdly think about quite often. A few days ago, I was discussing with my friend whether self-help books related to 'finding happiness' were useful or not. By writing this I'm not trying to 'change' you in any way or write some sort of self-help blog, but I guess my aim is for you (particularly readers around their very late teens and early 20s) to have a small think about what it means to you and hopefully gain something from reading this. It looks like this blog will either be extremely cringy or deep with no in-between, so please let me know how you felt about this!
To state a somewhat obvious thing, defining the word 'happiness' precisely is so subjective, despite the word 'happy' being one of the first adjectives that you would learn. I actually think that 'happy' is harder to define than 'sad', although they are basically the opposite of each other. The first time that I had to think about trying to defining happiness in depth was during my Economics A-Level class (no, Economics is not just about money or capitalism), and I remember being really fascinated by how many factors can be used in an attempt to 'measure' welfare. The United Nations happiness report uses six factors that are life expectancy, social support from family and friends, freedom, income, trust in government, and generosity. Of course, there are various lists of other important variables that can be taken into account when trying to 'measure' happiness, suggesting that this whole concept is very subjective; we can and should therefore define it as we want.
Indeed, it has conventionally been the case that monetary factors such as GDP per capita (i.e. income) are always used when trying to measure the general well-being of a country, which I guess is somewhat a more 'simple' and 'indisputable' way to measure the concept compared to the many other factors; this is because one can assign a number to it. To some extent, and pretty obviously, income and happiness are related on both a large (i.e. overall country) and individual scale. But the Easterlin Paradox (from Richard Easterlin) fascinated me since it stated that happiness did not increase with income in a linear way. Angus Deaton (a British-American economist) estimated a certain income threshold past which it wasn't necessarily related to happiness.
I'd say this is maybe why there is no right or wrong, yes or no answer to the question "does money buy happiness?". Because ok, maybe it can 'buy' happiness (perhaps 'stability' is a better word here), but only up to a certain point. For instance, to state the extreme, if one had no money at all or no ability to afford the basic necessities or be living in debt, etc (you get the point), most of you would agree that it would probably be hard to be 'happy' if we are using the general definition of this word. For sure, money can buy the material things that we need and want (and can play a role in making us feel 'happy'- whatever that means for you), but after a point, it seems like we need to figure out what non-material things make us happy.
One of the most important non-material factors that are always mentioned in studies is having strong social relationships (with friends, your SO, family, etc). After all, money is a social construct that we as a society have agreed to place a value on... Also with material goods, there really could be an endless want of things, whereas with good 'quality' relationships, it has been shown that it is correlated to reacting to stress better, being healthier (both of which then links to longevity), and so on, all of which are ultimately correlated with happiness in general.
In my head, I kind of 'separate' the definition of happy; there's a momentary and short-term one, and then there's a more 'longer-term' one...clearly this is my own interpretation so I'll try to elaborate. For example, I have a few memorable times related to music that made me so so happy in the moment and still makes me smile to this day whenever I remember it: although it was so nerve-racking, the times when I played my violin in front of my secondary school and my friends (and sometimes students I didn't know or teachers) showed so much support afterwards; playing with my string quartet from secondary school and receiving an unexpected amount of cheer and excitement from the audience; my uni quartet spontaneously busking late mid-winter (a shoutout to them!) and my friends coming to support us, and so on. This all meant so much to me, and to this day I am always grateful for these short moments that made the years of practice, time at my music school, stress and anxiety, so worth it. Remembering those moments make me smile to this day.
To name another (pretty random) example, something that made me excited and happy in the moment was seeing the perfectly hexagonal and pretty shape of snowflakes for the second time ever (the first was like ten years ago on the car window). Maybe I'm still a child or just one of the many people who love the rare UK snowy weather, but I literally can't stop smiling when walking through snow or waking up to seeing everything covered in white. A few years ago, I heard it was going to snow the next day, so I woke up early to wander around on the fresh snow in my area before going to school. I got so excited later that day when the teacher let our class go outside mid-lesson (simpler times you know?).
I really think that these short-term things that make us happy (however you define that) are what keeps us going at the end of the day; nobody can always be perfectly cheerful every second of the day. They can allow us to feel grateful at times (cringe, but true). Though of course, moments of feeling happy do not always need to be so sentimental! For example, I do love scrolling through my flawlessly algorithm-tailored Tiktok feed without guilt because it does lift my mood often (though of course there is a point where too much of it gets unhealthy).
Longer-term can be things such as general lifestyle and career goals, though this aside (since it isn't the be-all-and-end-all at this age to not have an exact idea of such goals, and even if you do those goals may change), I wanted to echo the many research done on how important relationships are to being happy in the longer-term. After figuring out what happiness really means to yourself, it ultimately seems like having good relationships is one of the most significant factors that keeps one both mentally and physically strong. I guess it doesn't even matter so much whether you are an introvert or an extrovert – whoever you are I'm sure the happiest moments you have had so far were shared with other people? The warm and happy moments in your future will undoubtedly be with others too.
Lots of people suggest that having an extremely small group of friends is the 'ideal', and that especially as you get older, the quality of relationships matters more than quantity. I agree with this, and I am very grateful for them, though I just wanted to mention that I also really value the friends who I would perhaps see once or twice a year, yet it doesn't even feel awkward whenever we meet. It would be as if it hadn't been long since we last saw each other (if you get what I mean?). Especially at this age, now that we are all starting to do different things, we can't meet all the time; simply keeping in contact with these friends probably means more to them than you'd think. Moreover, I love it when I meet someone new and afterward feel 'warm' (emotion-wise) – like if I had met this person years ago we would already be so close (I felt this often during my first year at uni!). In other words, there are so many people out there who will 'click' with you, be on your radar, and make you feel warm and happy after meeting them – keep in touch with them if you do meet them! It also feels so good to show these friends or family that you care by 'giving' something to them, and by this it doesn't need to be something expensive or valuable: for instance, I sent my dad a postcard during uni to his office in South Korea which cost about three pounds, and a few months later getting a call thanking me saying it was so unexpected was what made my day.
Always living a 'happy' life is not only hard and impossible but also not ideal; everyone is always faced with challenges because we are either faced with challenges that naturally come our way or because we simply set them for ourselves. If you are still reading this, thank you for attending my TED talk...really though I am realising now that it is so long. I didn't include any pictures above but below are some pictures that make me happy:)
Kathy
(image: café entrance in 익선동, Seoul, Korea at golden hour)
(image: Art GCSE exam oil painting of my succulent that the school art department hopefully still has)
(image: catching up with a friend at Gail's!)
(image: snowflakes)
(image: this awesome house that my dad designed)
(image: éclairs in a bakery in Paris)
P.S. Believe it or not, I actually started writing this straight after posting my previous blog (obviously I wasn't writing this 24/7, but still). Writing this I realised how hard it is to write about my thoughts, and I'm starting to think that maybe this is because I do not have an inner voice? I'm genuinely really curious to hear about your opinions on this whole topic, so please leave a review or message me, again thanks so much!
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