The Happiness Project: How To Be Happier

Maybe People Are Materialistic. Is That a Bad Thing?

One thing I hear quite often is “It’s awful, people are so materialistic. They think that buying things can make them happy, but it can’t.”

Well, that statement contains more than one idea. The first is “Money can’t buy happiness.” True, money can’t buy happiness, but spent wisely, it can contribute mightily to a happy life.

The other idea is that people are too materialistic—meaning, I think, that people place too much value on owning things and showing them off to others in order to make an impression.

I’ve been mulling over that proposition. One of the subjects that has fascinated me for a very long time is the relationship of people to objects. I went through a long obsession with potlatch. I wrote a book, Profane Waste, examining why people would destroy their own possessions. I’ve read a lot of books about subjects like conspicuous consumption and self-identity through brands. I’m interested in anything to do with the symbolic meaning of particular objects (the Greek herm, for example), which is one reason I love Jung’s work.

So I’ve always been interested in this topic. But it seems to me that a lot of behavior that people consider “materialistic” is actually motivated not by a wish to boost self-esteem through stuff or to show off possessions to other people—in a “Keep up with the Joneses” kind of way—but by other reasons.

For example, take the guy who always buys the latest tech gadget – not from a desire to show that he can afford the most expensive new device but to feed his fascination with technology and perhaps also to maintain his reputation as a maven, the person to whom everyone can go for advice.

Take the couple who constantly renovate their house by adding a deck, adding a garden, putting in a new kitchen—not to show off to the neighbors, but as a way to get an atmosphere of growth in their lives. They see their house getting nicer, and that gives them satisfaction.

Take the person who buys beautiful furniture. My mother, who has a tremendous appreciation for objects and a huge amount of expertise on what gives objects quality, would appreciate and acquire beautiful furniture even if she were the last person on earth.

Clothes are a puzzle. Some people appreciate beautiful clothes for their own sake; it’s not all about making a display for other people, though that’s part of it, too. Virginia Woolf wrote in her diary: “I must remember to write about my clothes next time I have an impulse to write. My love of clothes interests me profoundly; only it is not love; and what it is I must discover.” Is this materialistic?

For better or worse, buying things is a way to engage with them and with the world. If you’re interested in a certain kind of object, you often express that interest by researching, shopping, and buying it. People who can’t afford art go to museums. But when people who like art can afford it, they usually want to buy art, too. People who love to cook want to buy elaborate tools and ingredients. People who love music want to buy music.

For some reason, we like to own the things we love, even when it’s not necessary. I’m interested in reading The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin only every so often, and the neighborhood library has three copies on its shelves—yet I want my own copy. Is that “materialistic?” (It will be interesting to see if the Internet will change this impulse, at least for books, movies, and music.)

It’s also true that when we have these things, we want to show them to other people. Is that always conspicuous consumption?

And objects can be necessary apparatus for other things we want to build into our lives, like exploration, acquisition of knowledge, and sense of security.

The word materialistic can be defined in various ways, of course, and some behavior is truly “materialistic” in the negative sense and not very admirable. But I think it’s a term that is thrown around a lot, to cover behavior that isn’t as deplorable as often assumed.

But I’m still thinking through this and not sure of my conclusions so far. The relationship between people and objects—an inexhaustibly fascinating topic. What angles am I overlooking?

* I love Lisa Belkin's New York Times blog Motherlode, and I particularly appreciated this guest post by Laura Vanderkam, Are You Being Too Efficient? It struck a chord; my resolutions include Take time for projects and Force myself to wander.

* Check out the Happiness Project Toolbox! If you want to get started with your own happiness project, you'll find eight free tools that will help you. And it's a lot of fun.

Jung, Buffy, Twilight, Virginia Woolf—and Happiness

I love Carl Jung (the bits of his work that I understand, which isn’t much), and one of my favorite Jung quotations is “The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.”

This video clip is a perfect example—found on my friend Lev Grossman’s excellent blog, Nerd World. I love the fact that Jonathan McIntosh had the creative energy and interest to create this mash-up of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight:

[If you can't see the video, the URL for "Buffy vs Edward (Twilight Remixed)--OFFICIAL" is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM]

I connected with this remix on several levels:

— Take time for projects. Clearly Jonathan McIntosh is following that very important resolution.

— Though I’m not a historic Buffy fan, my TV-writer sister has worked a lot with Joss Whedon, so I always take an interest in his work.

— I love Twilight, books and movie alike. How much, you ask? I’ve read Midnight Sun. And The Host.

— There was a split-second clip from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which I recognized, of course. Huge, raving Harry Potter fan. I’ve got a ticket to the very first showing, at midnight in a few weeks, of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.

— Even my former lawyerly self got engaged in considering the assertion at the end that “This transformative work constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright law.” Why didn’t a case like this come up when I was hanging around courthouses?

Perhaps I should make a new resolution, to “Play with the objects I love.” I’m already doing this with my passion for J.M. Barrie’s The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. A friend and I are doing an homage to Barrie’s brilliant skeletal picture book—ours is called “Four to Llewelyn’s Edge.” This has turned out to be an enormous undertaking, and so much fun.

Along those lines, I wonder if I could use popular new tools (YouTube, as in the example above, or Twitter, or Facebook, as well as my blog) to shine a spotlight on my more obscure and more demanding passions. I want to highlight the things I love, and to try to entice others to follow me—just as this video made me want to watch old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

One idea: I’m considering sending out daily Tweets that are quotations from one of my favorite books, Virginia Woolf’s The Waves (bizarre: this book doesn't seem to be for sale on Amazon). I would love doing this. I wonder if the book would be interesting to anyone else in that form—if the beautiful writing would be engaging out of context like that—or if it would be too reductive. Perhaps, as in the video mash-up above, new pleasures could be revealed in a work that is usually read in a different way.

Hmmmm.

* Very apt for this subject: Bricolage Life. Looking at this blog made me want to sit down and MAKE something.

* Follow me on Twitter. I may or may not be sending out Woolf quotations in the near future.

Are Artists Unhappier Than Non-Artists?

There’s a question in the subject of happiness that puzzles me. Are artistic folk—or people of other kinds of genius—less happy than other people, and if so, why?

On the one hand, studies suggest that people who are happier are more creative, more resilient, more engaged, and more persistent in the face of difficulty and frustration. This would suggest that happier people would tend to be better artists (or whatever) than less happy people.

On the other hand, as discussed in Daniel Nettle’s Happiness, studies suggest that creative and influential people in the arts and public life tend to be more “neurotic”—meaning that they’re inclined to have more frequent and deeper experiences of negative emotions like anger, guilt, sadness, and fear than less-neurotic people.

Certainly popular culture teaches that artists and geniuses tend to be tormented, brooding, angry, etc.

Which is true?

I’m not sure. I do believe that the association of unhappiness with great ability goes along with Happiness Myth NO. 1: Happy people are annoying and stupid. Because unhappiness is associated with discernment, sophistication, and depth, it seems right that artists and other extraordinary types would be less happy. Plus it seems cooler. What’s more, given that association, people who want to demonstrate their soulfulness or intellect may be choose to emphasize their negative emotions.

It’s also true that unhappy people tend to have more colorful lives than happy people, so their biographies are juicier, and we tend to know more about their lives.

I don’t know what’s true as a general matter, but I know that for myself, I’m more creative and productive when I’m happier. I’m more willing to take risks; to spend energy in ways that may not be directly useful; to shrug off criticism, rejection, failure, and scorn; to open myself to new experiences, ideas, and people.

As for art in particular: a deep love of art, whether creating it or appreciating it, does bring a kind of melancholy – the yearning for perfection, the desire to swallow it up, the despair of achieving your vision, the painful beauty of masterworks. But that melancholy is also set in a context of beauty, discernment, and joy.

I remember one afternoon a few years ago, when I needed to pick something up from a friend who is a brilliant artist. He has a painting school which meets in the first floor of his house, so when I stopped by to see him, I walked through a room full of students who were busily drawing a model, while music played and light poured in from a skylight. I walked back to my friend’s private studio, which looked exactly the way you’d imagine – cans full of paintbrushes, canvases stacked against the walls, odd casts and stretchers and other artistic apparatus lying around.

He was painting when I came in, and to my surprise, he could paint while we talked. (I can’t imagine being able to do work and talk at the same time – utterly impossible for me.) Anyway, as we were talking, he was working on a beautiful, beautiful painting.

He stopped for moment to step back and consider his handiwork, and I said to him, with more than a touch of envy in my voice, “Jacob, you are lucky.” I gestured broadly around the room.

“I know,” he nodded, and he sat back on his stool and smiled at me. “Yes, I know.”

Now I’m asking every artist I meet about this question. Are artists less happy? Are geniuses less happy? What do you think?

* I get a big kick out of the blog Living Oprah—a woman spent the year of 2008 "living her life completely according to the advice of Oprah Winfrey." The year has run, and she's working on a book right now, but she still posts. Hmmm...does her project remind you of anyone else's? Just goes to show that everyone's happiness project is different—I find every one fascinating.

* Excellent! A reader has started an online group for discussing reading related to happiness. If you're interested, join up!