Stumbling On Happiness
By Joe Guse
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death
Macbeth
Life is what happens to you while you're busy
making other plans.
John Lennon
One of the most interesting books I've read in the last couple of months is Daniel
Gilbert's Stumbling on Happiness.
Gilbert's premise is that we often make decisions in our present with the idea that
these things will benefit us at some future time. We deny ourselves things and save
our money thinking that our future selves will enjoy and appreciate these sacrifices,
only to arrive in the future full of regret about our past decisions. How can this
be? Gilbert makes the point that we are often very poor at predicting what will
make us happy in the future, and that we often arrive in the future baffled by the
decisions we made in the past.
So what is the lesson here? I took this lesson as a kind of "Carpe diem" (Seize
the Day) message, and that because our future selves are often so disappointed with
us, perhaps the idea is to indulge in and appreciate the precious present.
I recently came to appreciate this lesson when I used a service called "future me."
The purpose of this site is to allow people to send themselves an email at some
designated point in the future and then reflect back on how they were thinking at
the time they wrote this letter. I recently received one from myself I had written
two years ago and it was filled with angst, unrequited love, anxiety about unpaid
bills, as well as a glimmer of hope for the future. At the time I had never published
a book, was pining away for some girl who I now barely remember, and was worried
sick about some financial concern that I now see was ridiculous. Why was this guy
so stressed out? I wanted to go back and tell him that everything was going to be
fine, and that things were going to work out pretty well for him if he would just
hang in there. I was also sad to see how little I was enjoying life at that moment,
and how the things I was ruminating about at the time turned out to be virtually
meaningless in the future.
So, although I was disappointed in seeing the lack of joy in my past self's life,
I also learned a valuable lesson about how the things we worry and obsess about
rarely come to fruition. I now do things with little thought for the future me,
as I realize he is a very harsh judge and difficult to please. I try to constantly
live in and find pleasure in the moment, and, although I now may error on the side
of hedonism, I find that this is certainly the best recipe for finding humor in
everyday situations.
The dangers of mortgaging the present to pay for the future was also demonstrated
to me again and again when I worked in a couple of different Nursing Homes. Most
of the patients I interacted with had experienced the depression, and this experience
indelibly stamped the idea that money should be saved. Again and again I saw people
who were struck with Alzheimer's right as they were getting ready to enjoy their
"golden years" and it never failed to break my heart. I heard many stories of how
people denied themselves everything during the first 65 years of life so they could
finally travel and see the world when they got older, only to arrive at retirement
to be struck by a debilitating illness.
It wasn't uncommon for a couple to have saved as much as a million dollars for their
retirement, only to see this entire amount disappear in a couple of years as the
health care industry slowly ate away at their savings. This may in fact be the rule
rather than the exception, and this is I hope a cautionary tale for anyone who continually
denies themselves things in the present. Life is uncertain, but what is a virtual
certainty is that as medical science continues to expand the ability to keep people
alive, now roughly 80 percent of people will eventually die in a hospital, and this
number continues to get bigger. This virtually guarantees a drain on people's savings,
and my advice is to spend your money enjoying things now, as the medical system
will find a way to get a lot of it before it all said and done.
So am I advocating not saving at all? No, but there is a lesson here about living
in the present, and there is an even greater lesson here about the futility of ruminating
about the future. Most of what awaits us is simply unknown, and as we continue to
worry about the future precious opportunities to experience joy in the present continue
to pass us by. This is where the relationship between mindfulness and humor becomes
essential. Every moment in life can become a wonderful learning opportunity if we
stay in the here and now. Many people will tell you humor is about "timing", and
when we use our time to obsess about some future or past event, the joy of the moment
has past. This is the lesson of Gilbert's book, and it speaks directly to the power
of mindfulness in alerting us to the comic possibilities around us.
Joe Guse is a former comedian from Chicago now pursuing a career in Clinical psychology.
He is the author of 6 books, and is currently working on a book about the healing
power of laughter. Contact Joe at joeyguse@yahoo.com
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