Are you trying to be happy.. or what?

Happiness is tough. It's this tricky, hard to define, concept that many of us are trying to pursue.

But should we?

Walk with me.

If it's hard for Kahneman, it's hard for me

Daniel Kahneman was a world-renowned behavioral economist. His book, Thinking Fast and Slow, is perhaps the most well-known behavioral economics book in circulation today.

Have you read it? Through it end? I find the end of the book fascinating, where Kahneman talks about happiness. Here's a reminder:

During the last ten years we have learned many new facts about happiness. But we have also learned that the word happiness does not have a simple meaning and should not be used as if it does. Sometimes scientific progress leaves us more puzzled than we were before.

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 407). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

This is one of the reasons I tend to caveat, though never avoid, answers about how happy I am or what we should do to be happy. All my caveats are variations of "if it's hard for Kahneman, it's hard for me."

In short.. happiness is complicated.

The main complication Kahneman talks about in the book is the difference between the Experiencing and the Remembering self: how happy we feel about something in the moment is not how happy we remember to have felt about it, and it's unclear which one to optimize for when we have to choose.

But Kahneman touches on several other limitations of our idea of happiness, including this gem:

fifteen years ago, I quickly found out that almost everything that was known about the subject drew on the answers of millions of people to minor variations of a survey question, which was generally accepted as a measure of happiness. The question is clearly addressed to your remembering self, which is invited to think about your life:

All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?

Kahneman, Daniel. Thinking, Fast and Slow (p. 391). Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Kindle Edition.

What is my point? My point is that although we're making progress, in general we don't quite know what we're talking about when we're talking about happiness.

This lack of clarity only adds to the difficulty of pursuing happiness.

Or deciding whether to do it.

What does it take to be happy?

I want to talk about something that's roughly akin to instrumental happiness. Instrumental happiness is when some other type of happiness, typically our kids', defines our happiness.

You may have heard this, or said this, before: "I just want my kids to happy." Of course this can apply to other loved ones as well.

Now we're compounding a bit on the complication.

It's as if on a thought experiment, you asked somebody "what does it mean to be happy?" and they answered "Oh well, I don't know exactly, but I know I'll have it when my kid does!"

Now, I didn't raise any kids, but I've been around enough parents to know that it's not always a walk in the park. Raising kids is hard work.

Daniel Gilbert from Harvard talks about this eloquently in his research on happiness in the book Stumbling on Happiness.

Careful studies of how women feel as they go about their daily activities show that they are less happy when taking care of their children than when eating, exercising, shopping, napping, or watching television. Indeed, looking after the kids appears to be only slightly more pleasant than doing housework.

Gilbert, Daniel. Stumbling on Happiness(p. 243). HarperCollins Publishers. Kindle Edition.

Since I know I have some empty nesters who read me, I figured I'd throw this other book quote too: "Despite what we read in the popular press, the only known symptom of ‘empty nest syndrome’ is increased smiling."

But I digress. What's the problem with both conclusions above?

Well, you'll notice the pattern. The problem is we don't really know what we're talking about when we talk about happiness. The above conclusions were taken probably from some variation of the happiness survey Kahneman describes: "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

So yes, there's probably something there in this research (assuming it replicates!), but like in nutrition, so many caveats apply that it's hard to know what exactly to make of it.

So to start making sense out of happiness, I want to break down things further in two concepts: Contentment and Meaning. There's much more to happiness than this, but this will help us make progress disentangling this.

Let's talk about contentment first.

Contentment – I'm happy as I am

Fumio Sasaki has what I still think is the best book on minimalism – Goodbye Things (despite him saying things like Steve Jobs being the ultimate minimalist). Curiously, this is also probably the best book on contentment, and minimalism and contentment seem incredibly related.

There’s happiness in having less. That’s why it’s time to say goodbye to all our extra things.

[..]

I can’t believe how my life has changed. I got rid of my possessions, and I’m now truly happy.

Sasaki, Fumio. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Fumio talks about how contentment comes from the adage "It's not about having everything you need, but about needing everything you have," a typical minimalist, er, maxim.

In a rather interesting hat-tip to Stoicism, minimalists really focus on not depending on externals. If contentment is about having a perfect match between our desires and their fulfillment, they focus on the left side, having fewer desires, than on the right, having an exceptional ability to fulfill them.

This approach to contentment comes with trade-offs. One interesting trade-off is that, by focusing on not needing, having, or pursuing desires, you can end up content but.. not quite competent. That is, accomplishing things in the real world can be quite difficult for a content person.

Fumio talks about this trade-off with refreshing honesty.

It may sound like I’m exaggerating. Someone once said to me, “All you did is throw things away,” which is true. I haven’t accomplished much yet and there’s nothing that I can really be proud of, at least not at this point in my life. But one thing I’m sure of is that by having fewer things around, I’ve started feeling happier each day. I’m slowly beginning to understand what happiness is.

Sasaki, Fumio. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism (p. 27). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

What I love about minimalism is that it helps us understand something, in this case contentment, by exploring its extremes. Sure, you can be content by removing many of your desires, but it can then be challenging to grow at the same time.

If curbing desires is about reducing the left side of contentment, growth is often about increasing the right side – and it's hard to do both because they tug in different directions.

So let's talk about that other side – fulfilling desires and needs, particularly about the happiness that comes from doing it for other people, like our kids.

Let's touch on what it means to find meaning and its connection to happiness.

Meaning – I just want my life to mean something

When we say "I want my kid to be happy," we typically imagine a life quite different from Fumio Sasaki's, the minimalist:

I don’t keep a utility rack in my bathroom. I use liquid soap to wash my body and my hair, and after I get out of the bath, I wipe my whole body with a small hand towel.

Sasaki, Fumio. Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism (p. 20). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

Instead, especially in the US, we teach kids to pursue more from a young age: join academic clubs, sports teams, volunteer, compete in STEM fairs or debate, learn musical instruments. All these are seen as essential for giving them the best shot at getting into a top college, and eventually landing the best job.

And, presumably, the best shot at being happy. Right?

It doesn't take much imagination to theorize that Fumio Sasaki's kids (if he had any) wouldn't be pursuing happiness in this way – and not just because he's Japanese and not American.

It's challenging. Preclude a kid from all of those extracurriculars, and you likely remove their shot at a top university or job. Say they don't go to any college, and work at a minimum wage job with some food insecurity, and then have kids of their own. And then perhaps some health issues, for which they now have no insurance.

While contentment can be presumably achieved no matter your circumstances, there's still a perspective that some circumstances are worse than others and worth improving – even if this improvement is unrelated to your happiness.

Now, to talk about happiness from a meaning perspective, imagine it's your kid who was in that predicament, and you helped them: they now go to college, have a job with insurance, and have gotten back on their feet. It was hard work, but they're much better off now, thanks to you.

How much happier would helping your kid and grandkid that way make you feel? There's a happiness we achieve from service that doesn't come from reducing our desires, but rather from addressing the needs of others, particularly loved ones. That's happiness through meaning.

It's easier to achieve this happiness in meaning through your competence – by actually helping – than through a Stoic detachment from desires, such as "I'm content no matter what happens to my kid; whatever happens, happens" which is a much more challenging (perhaps impossible) proposition.

With meaning, you're usually changing the right side, the desires being fulfilled, and not the left side, the desires you have, to get them aligned.

The downside, though, is that there's almost a complete overlap between pursuing happiness through meaning and a lack of contentment.

Well, should you try to be happy? And how?

We're getting close to the end of our walk. If you're still with me 1,700 words in (wee!), you have some of the foundation for the punchline.

This year I shared my 2025 goals with many of my friends. One particularly thought-provoking question a friend asked was:

Well, Dui.. would that make you happy?

What a beautiful question!

It's hard to know which path to take if you don't know where you're going. And in life, the closest many of us get to where we want to go is "to be happy."

But again, happiness is complicated and, for the most part, we don't quite know what we're talking about when we're talking about happiness.

On one hand, it could be finding contentment – being truly satisfied with life. Answering "absolutely!" to the psychology survey question "All things considered, how satisfied are you with your life as a whole these days?"

That is not dissimilar to the pursuit of minimalists, or our day-dreams of escaping life and spending our whole days at the beach.

On the other hand, it could be finding meaning – to truly make a difference for others, particularly loved ones. Answering "absolutely!" to the question "hey there .. can you help?"

There's typically little contentment in a life in pursuit of meaning – it can be hard and full of negative emotions such as frustration, stress, sadness, and anger – but there's often a high level of happiness in a meaningful life.

Or maybe, you're pursuing happiness in a way that isn't contentment or meaning. It could be Kahneman's experiencing self, Csikszentmihalyi's flow, religion and spirituality, family membership, community membership, extreme sports, dopamine manipulation through technology, the use of drugs and other opioids .. all of the above, and many other options.

As we discussed, if you don't know where you're going, it's hard to find the right path to get you there.

And I'll argue that, if you're just trying to be happy, you probably don't really know where you're going.

Because, for the most part, we don't quite know what we're talking about when we're talking about happiness.