This land of plenty, our great U.S. of A., is like a giant all-you-can eat buffet of life; there are no limits. We want a lot and we expect a lot, preferably fast. And why not?
We are not just his way just with food, either. We also like our happiness fast and big.
When it comes to food though, we have external baselines that tell us exactly what our caloric intake should be. We understand how an anorexic cannot register appetite and how a person suffering from obesity cannot register fullness. When we say, “I eat too much” or “I don’t eat well enough” we know exactly what we’re talking about.
This is not true when it comes to happiness. Theories of economics that measure a country’s general level of happiness aside, we don’t really have an accurate external measure that instruct us as to whether we have to much or too little appetite for happiness.
We can say, abstractly, that some really miserable people really do not have enough of an appetite for happiness while others who seek happiness compulsively and addictively are seeking, perhaps, too much.
Extremes aside, there are milder forms of happiness-seeking imbalance as well. For example, people who have so much ambition that they can never feel satisfied. Or, people who try to squeeze themselves into a falsely elevated state of happiness. In both cases, the happiness-gauge is off. These people are trying way too hard to feel happy, and they don’t know why.
One of the problems with basic happiness is that it is very inconspicuous and soft-spoken. When you have happiness, it is not intense like joy or euphoria or bliss. In fact, people who are grieving sometimes realize that they took happiness for granted before their loss. They think, “How could I not have seen what I had?”
People who meditate or do a lot of relaxation also claim to recognize happiness more. Maybe if you quiet yourself down, basic happiness comes more into view.
But most of the time, Americans live life in the fast lane, which is generally very alluring and attention grabbing. We long for excitement and sometimes trip over into unhappiness as we try to get stimulated.
So the next time your happiness gauge propels you into conflict as to whether you should try to do something to be happier or accept something so you can be more grateful, study yourself.
Maybe, you are happy enough. Maybe, you don’t have to work so hard to supersize it. Maybe, this is happiness right here, right now: imperfect, restless, understated, imbalanced, and shifting, sometimes constantly.
Claudia Luiz, Ed.M., Cert. Psya., LMHC #6053, is a psychoanalyst in private practice with offices in Brookline and Westwood. She works with children, adults, couples and groups. She can be reached at cluiz@post.harvard.edu, at 617-947-4838 or via her Web site at www.claudialuiz.com.
