Happy Choices

Sometimes I read or hear the expression that being happy is a choice.

Well, it is true I suppose. Our feelings and emotions are up to us. We can’t do much about pain if we stub our toe, but we can do a lot about anger, or sadness. Many people manage to remain happy despite considerable hardship.

But often the advice is not very helpful, since it is of the “just get over it” type. I am not sure whether we can judge how others are feeling any more than we can tell just how hard they stubbed that toe. If someone is grieving or depressed or shameful or riddled with guilt, it is often not all that helpful to have others appearing to judge you.

So choosing to be happy in the moment is a valuable skill, but not an easy one to acquire. There are some tricks available. I have changed my driving attitude completely since coming to live in New York. The roads here are dangerous as they are overcrowded, badly signaled, often pot-holed, and populated by some wildly reckless drivers. I decided early on that I would choose never to be in a hurry while driving here, always giving myself the luxury of time. Having time helps my other decision, to choose not to be angry with other drivers. I still lecture them from the safety of my own vehicle and sometimes I even gesture to them, but then I try to laugh, and then move on. I find it usually works, and my driving stress levels have gone down as a result.

But how can we think away more long-lasting anger or sadness? It is not so easy. There was a discussion of this in a recent Guardian Weekly Oliver Burkeman column. Burkeman followed the advice of some colleagues and experimented with avoiding all news for a period. The reasoning is that a lot of news is about humanity at its worst or most stricken, and therefore is likely to make us sad or angry, therefore if we choose to avoid news we can do a lot towards avoiding sadness or anger.

It did not work for Burkeman and I’m sure it would not work for me. I am sure that I would lose mental stimulation, be robbed of some curiosity, and somehow feel less connected to humanity. These emotional losses would outweigh any gain from avoiding any torrent of bad news. Still, it might work for some people.

Further, perhaps there is a level of interest in the news above which it is not depressing. I am careful to read enough to understand some context, and the overwhelming context is one of magnificent human progress punctuated by setbacks. The recent pace of medical breakthroughs is stunning, especially concerning the brain. Trends in crime, literacy, teenage pregnancy or child death are all in a positive direction globally. It may not seem it with the torrent of refugees suffering on Europe’s borders, but war deaths in the last ten years were the lowest in recorded history. The survey of Millennials in The Economist in January was wholly uplifting.

If you just dip into the news instead of really trying to understand it, then maybe it will be depressing and better to give up. In some ways, the US TV networks have tried to make that choice for us, but virtually eliminating meaningful news in favour of celebrity gossip, scandal, stories inducing judgment of other groups, and bumper sticker politics. If that is the diet available, then better to give it up – but better still to look for a more nutritious diet.

The Burkeman column made me wonder about other choices that can influence our happiness. One comes from our social lives, and concerns how deeply we choose to intervene in service to friends in need.

Two things happened to me in the autumn of the year 2000, when I was living in Oslo. The first was that a couple we knew moderately well suddenly revealed extreme marital difficulties. He walked out citing her behaviour, and her behaviour in response became extreme. They both lacked mediators, so I chose to step in and try to help by listening to both of them. My reward was to be abused and threatened myself, but I think I did help the situation towards stability.

The second event was that I suffered a breakdown myself. Work pressures became intolerable and I feel into a vicious cycle of lost sleep and mounting pressure, a cycle that I broke by declaring myself sick and in need of help. This terminated my upward career, but was a good decision and one that I recommend to anyone desperate enough to be considering it.

The strange thing about these two events was that it took me eight years to connect them. But now I am sure they are connected. I am sure the amateur counselling was draining away some of the energy I needed to stay on top of my work.

This leads to a wider category of choice, that of career itself. What about people who counsel for a living? They must be seeing humanity at its most stressed every day of their working lives, and getting blamed and caught in the middle of conflicts. The same will be true of many jobs. The police come to mind, but also carers for those with addiction and other medical fields. The people sitting behind desks at welfare offices face humanity at its most desperate as well.

I think this is something to think about when choosing a career. It is one thing to have a talent for caring, but quite another to subject yourself to the consequences for forty years. Do you have the sort of mental resilience that can withstand that? Perhaps it is like the news, and by being more deeply invested the drain can be balanced by a positive context. I doubt it somehow. None of us should be surprised when people in such professions cope by becoming detached from the situations they face, even at the expense of their ability to empathise and perform.

My daughter has chosen midwifery as a career and I am delighted for her, and the choice so far seems to work for her since she retains a great passion and energy for the field. When she first chose it, I was happy for a series of right-brain practical reasons, such as the sustainability of the profession, its international portability and the flexibility of work patterns offered. But more important than any of this may be that it is one of the few professions that work with humanity at its most positive. Pain and occasional catastrophe notwithstanding, the outcome of her job is usually a source of soaring joy. That is a rare gift in a job.

Life partner is obviously an even bigger category. If we live with someone exuding positive energy that must reflect on our own mental health. Love conquers all, so this truth might be more difficult to act upon.

The overall lesson, for which as so often thanks are due to Burkeman, is to be aware that our circumstances affect our mental health, and that we make choices, large and small, that affect our circumstances. We would be well advised to be aware of this when making the choices, even if we don’t change course as a result.

So there are some things we can do with no downside, such as working to improve our driving mood. Some choices we can make with eyes open because of wider values such as curiosity for humanity, helping friends in need or even following love. But, in the same way as we learn that we can’t solve world hunger or contribute time and money to every single good cause that crosses our path, we must invest within our capacity and make priorities.