Happiness ≠ Meaningfulness

Writing for The Atlantic, Emily Esfahani Smith shares the findings of a study that identifies the differences between happiness and meaningfulness:

[T]he researchers found that a meaningful life and happy life overlap in certain ways, but are ultimately very different. Leading a happy life, the psychologists found, is associated with being a "taker" while leading a meaningful life corresponds with being a "giver." [...]

"Happy people get a lot of joy from receiving benefits from others while people leading meaningful lives get a lot of joy from giving to others," explained Kathleen Vohs, one of the authors of the study, in a recent presentation at the University of Pennsylvania. In other words, meaning transcends the self while happiness is all about giving the self what it wants. People who have high meaning in their lives are more likely to help others in need.

There's more:

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment -- which is perhaps the most important finding of the study, according to the researchers. While happiness is an emotion felt in the here and now, it ultimately fades away, just as all emotions do; positive affect and feelings of pleasure are fleeting. The amount of time people report feeling good or bad correlates with happiness but not at all with meaning.

Meaning, on the other hand, is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. [P]eople who thought more about the present were happier, but people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles and sufferings felt more meaning in their lives, though they were less happy.

Having negative events happen to you, the study found, decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.

Victor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning, gets the last word:

A man who becomes conscious of the responsibility he bears toward a human being who affectionately waits for him, or to an unfinished work, will never be able to throw away his life. He knows the "why" for his existence, and will be able to bear almost any "how."

Is it better to be loving than to be right?

Jeff Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, in a New York Times interview:

Among many things that [my mentor Ray Chambers] has taught me are five rules for happiness. So the first one is living in the moment. The second is that it’s better to be loving than to be right, and if you’re in a relationship, you know how challenging that can be. The third one is to be a spectator to your own thoughts, especially when you become emotional, which is almost impossible to do. The fourth is to be grateful for at least one thing every day, and the last is to help others every chance you get.

The second rule stopped me: Is it really better to be loving than to be right?

Ideally we would like to be both loving and right, but in a heated discussion, when our irrationality is heightened and we're compelled to lose sight of one for the other, which is more sacred?

In my experience, I've never regretted being loving, but there are plenty of times I've regretted being right. When I prioritize being right, I become singularly focused on getting someone to agree with me, which means I stop listening to what they're saying, because they are obviously wrong. I may hear what they're saying, their obviously wrong words, but what's missing is empathy, a consideration of their motivations and concerns.

Instead, I hear only disagreement, which can lead to a frustration that, at its worst, can reduce others to "the idiot that needs to know how wrong they are" or "the asshole that needs to be put in their place". There are other, subtler things that can be missed, too. Maybe I don't notice bystanders tuning out, annoyed. Or I don't realize my "opponent" isn't even interested in arguing. Or that there isn't any upside to "winning" the argument.

I find I make this mistake most often with people I'm comfortable with, those closest to me. I'm reminded of something Ryan Holiday wrote:

We give the benefit of courtesy to everybody but the people who earned it. Think of how much patience we have for total strangers and acquaintances. But what a short fuse we have for the actual people in our life. In the course of our everyday lives, our priorities are so very backwards. We do our best to impress people we’ll never see again and take for granted people we see all the time. We’re respectful in our business lives, casual and careless in our personal. We punish closeness with criticism, reward unfamiliarity with politeness. [...] Sure, be friendly to everyone but bend over backwards—because they’ve earned it—for the people who put up with your shit on a daily basis.

When I'm careless with loved ones, it's because I know them so well. Those relationships feel, to some degree, predictable, and I develop an intuition for what they will tolerate. There's no need to watch my words because I think I know the potential consequences and I'm okay with them.

...Until I'm wrong and misjudge the consequences. And that's the thing about prioritizing being right: I'm not always going to be right. There's a new book I haven't read called The Half-life of Facts that is, crudely summarized, about why half of today's "facts" will eventually be proven wrong. What's right today won't necessarily be right tomorrow, and so it's important to humble myself, especially when the universe has taken a break from doing it for me.

If being loving is better than being right, what exactly does that mean? Does it mean no longer standing up for what I believe? Does it mean always being "nice", even when someone could be harmfully wrong? Not to me.

To me, the opposite of being loving is disrespecting someone — cutting them down, mocking them, or refusing to consider their perspective. Once I feel the need to disrespect someone, that's a leading indicator that I'm at the brink of losing — of not persuading anyone of anything — and it's time to take a step back and reevaluate the situation.

There's nothing to gain by disrespecting someone I'm trying to persuade. Doing so risks losing not just the current conversation but future ones, which will be handicapped if they no longer respect me nor want to listen to me. This is all assuming the person in question needs to be persuaded. Because if not, if the person is harmless or inconsequential or unpersuadable, then why bother?

The Wondrousness and Humiliation of Being Alive

That's a phrase I like from an essay I love, adapted from a speech author Jeffrey Euginedes recently gave to young writers. It is, you'll see, about more than writing. It's about remembering why you're doing what you're doing and what you hoped to accomplish. It's about recognizing the insidious forces that are influencing you to compromise yourself, to head down a regrettable path shaped by fashion, commerce, popular opinion or even your own past success.

This may all sound trite, but nothing's a cliche when it's happening to you. And chances are that today, at the beginning of a new year, when practically everyone is either preparing their improbable list of resolutions or briefly pausing to consider their trajectory, this wonderful reminder of a speech is relevant to you, too.

The Brothers Kellerman

If you've watched a major boxing fight on HBO in the last few years, you've probably seen Max Kellerman. Despite his booming voice, his wide-eyed stare on television always made him look nervous and green to me, and being the only young commentator surrounded by gray hairs didn't help.

And then my cousin Allan introduced me to his favorite sports podcast Max & Marcellus, and I instantly recognized Max's mug in the cover art, surprised to hear him discussing sports other than boxing. An entertaining interview with Kobe Bryant turned me into a fan, and nowadays I listen whenever I see an episode description that catches my eye.

One such episode was the day it was discovered that retired football star Junior Seau committed suicide. Max's cohost Marcellus Wiley was devastated, choking up throughout the show. As a former teammate of Seau, he was profoundly influenced by Seau's example and held him in the highest regard. The episode was especially captivating because the news broke mid-show, so with details still pouring in, listeners heard in real-time the thoughts of a man trying to wrap his head and heart around a selfish act by the most selfless person he knew.

What impressed me most was how well Max managed what could've been a difficult conversation, and in the final hour he briefly mentioned his own experience with suicidal thoughts after his brother was murdered. The murder was the subject of an excellent 2006 Sports Illustrated article, which was also about the strength and dynamic of the brothers' relationship. A taste:

Sam, as a fourth-grader, wrote a story about a monkey in a barrel whose keeper pelted him with numbers--big, heavy ones like 110--until the monkey heaved back a huge one, 1,186, the sum of all the numbers hurled at him, and knocked out the shocked keeper. All the brothers, as sons of a shrink, knew it was a story about Sam and Max. Sam could think and articulate as fast as his big brother, lie in wait listening and then wreak havoc with a reply. Once, debating why man had invented sports, Sam unloaded this haymaker: "Sports is man's joke on God, Max. You see, God says to man, 'I've created a universe where it seems like everything matters, where you'll have to grapple with life and death and in the end you'll die anyway, and it won't really matter.' So man says to God, 'Oh, yeah? Within your universe we're going to create a sub-universe called sports, one that absolutely doesn't matter, and we'll follow everything that happens in it as if it were life and death.'" Which delighted Max, because he craved a foil, someone who would compel him to hurl ever bigger and heavier numbers.

On a dry debating day they'd resort to the King of All Games, a joust they'd invented in which they'd select a subset--condiments, say--and then hammer out its hierarchy, haggling over whether salt, butter, mayo or ketchup was the king, the prince or a mere jester. Then they'd analyze each other's analyses, exposing hidden psychological motives, louder, louder, with younger brothers Harry and Jack chirping from the sidelines, until their father would shout, "Time out! Time out! I can't take it!" and their mother would flee to her easel and their friends would flee to the bathroom, choking back laughter, leaving Max and Sam at the table arguing, their debate disintegrating an hour later into Ahhh, you're full of s--- and You're such a f------ moron! ... two boys growing closer than any brothers you've ever known.

All That We Risk in the End

Journalist Mark Harris interviews Steven Spielberg and Daniel Day-Lewis at a screening of Lincoln. At 11:24:

MH: I'd like to know if you find fear useful. Is it more useful to go in thinking, I really think I can do this, or I'm really not sure I can do this?

SS: Well, you absolutely... I require fear in order to run toward something. Fear never makes me run away from anything, but the more scared I am, the more frightened I am, the more I have to run into what's scaring me to try to figure out what it is. Cause it has power. It holds sway over me, fear. And it has a certain kind of a power, and I don't like losing control, so things that frighten me make me go to it to embrace it, to understand it, which gives me a better understanding of myself. In that case, the work that I'm proudest of is the work that I'm most afraid of.

DDL: No, I completely agree with that. Fear is obviously a stimulating [laughs] emotion. It's funny cause the question came up today, and it reminded me of a moment many, many years ago when I was still a kid. I read an account of my father's life, my father who I really never got to know very well. But, in this autobiographical piece of writing of his, there was a moment at his boarding school in England where he'd been confronted with something that was tremendously fearful to him, and had found in spite of himself that he moved towards the fear rather than retreating from it, towards that thing that was fearful, and... and I recognize that. I felt that was something that we had in common. And it's not always served me well [laughs] in my life. But in terms of the work: After all, what do we have to lose? I mean, we talk of the danger of taking on a piece of work in a creative field. But the worst thing that can happen is that you become a fool. And that's a risk that you take pretty much all the time. And it was a very difficult lesson to learn when I was a student, cause I had a certain sense of dignity and pride, and I didn't like the idea of being foolish, but I learned pretty soon that it was essential to fail and to be foolish. And that's all that we risk in the end.

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

The Importance of Being Ironic

A few people I respect recommended this post in the New York Times' contemporary philosophy blog titled "How to Live Without Irony". Although I appreciated its advocacy of sincerity, I didn't like the piece, but I didn't feel like it was worth taking the time to think through why. Fortunately, I didn't have to, as one of the comments summarized my sentiments exactly:

I would hate to live in a world that was so full of hipsters that I felt the need to write a column about them. I'm thirty years older than Ms. Wampole, so maybe the view from up here is different from hers, but I hardly ever encounter the people she's talking about, except maybe as comic figures in sitcoms.

The fact that fundamentalists are never ironic is to me the highest recommendation for irony that I can imagine. Irony is the basis of humor, which has a way of illuminating truth and puncturing pomposity. I would happily live surrounded by hipsters if they crowded out the self-important scolds and all the rest who are dreary, humorless and rigid. I suppose people who purposefully adopt an ironic worldview might be equally dreary, especially if they don't get their own joke.

There are a lot of interesting ideas in this compactly written column. There's not a wasted word; but I found I had to come up for air every few sentences, possibly because it treats the ironic hipster without a bit of irony itself. But that's just me. If I had friends who used phrases like "dissipate the fogs of irony," I'd roll my eyes so high in their sockets I'd have to get them surgically put back in place.

You Just Have to Do Something

Jonathan Moore shares the lesson he learned after nearly losing his child.

The World's Poorest President

Jose Mujica, president of Uruguay, quoted by BBC News:

"I'm called 'the poorest president', but I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more. This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself."

He lives on a run-down farm, gives away 90% of his monthly salary, and his only asset is an $1800 Volkswagen Beetle. He's a pro-choice atheist that supports the legalization of marijuana. He is perfect for a Dos Equis parody.

The Higher Educator's Dilemma

Clay Shirky on the inevitable disruption of higher education:

[T]he fight over [massive open online courses] is really about the story we tell ourselves about higher education: what it is, who it’s for, how it’s delivered, who delivers it. The most widely told story about college focuses obsessively on elite schools and answers a crazy mix of questions: How will we teach complex thinking and skills? How will we turn adolescents into well-rounded members of the middle class? Who will certify that education is taking place? How will we instill reverence for Virgil? Who will subsidize the professor’s work?

MOOCs simply ignore a lot of those questions. The possibility MOOCs hold out isn’t replacement; anything that could replace the traditional college experience would have to work like one, and the institutions best at working like a college are already colleges. The possibility MOOCs hold out is that the educational parts of education can be unbundled. MOOCs expand the audience for education to people ill-served or completely shut out from the current system, in the same way phonographs expanded the audience for symphonies to people who couldn’t get to a concert hall, and PCs expanded the users of computing power to people who didn’t work in big companies.

Philip Roth's Disregard

A quick Google search revealed that I first heard of author Philip Roth in 2006, the year in which his book "Everyman" was published. I was a junior in college whose interestingness was closely correlated with how many NPR podcasts I'd listened to, so I figure that's how I learned of the author, the book and its premise. Back then, Metacritic included book reviews, and with high ratings confirming my interest, I added the book to my reading list. Except I never got around to it. And this is despite his name coming up many times — America's greatest living novelist! — in the past six years.

Well, now that Philip Roth is retiring from writing, his name has come up once again, a reminder of perhaps my longest lasting to-do. And yet, the first thing I have read is not one of his books but a 2008 profile of him in GQ, written by one of his most adoring fans, who realizes that his hero has zero interest in his readers' adulation and refuses to be conflated with his work.

"So after all this nattering," I say, "my question is: At the age of 75, do you walk around the world with your imagination lit up? So that you're perpetually open to anything being writable, anything being a metaphor?"

"No."

A silence.

"You have to remain…childlike? In a way?"

"You have to remain alert," Roth says. "Which adults can do."

An excellent bitch-slap.

"I'm not writing when I'm walking around," he continues. "I can only really write when I'm alone in a place that's mine, that I'm accustomed to, and there's no interruption. I don't have a phone. I don't have anything that can distract me. And I spend the hours ruminating. If you spend six or seven hours ruminating on your invention, the next part of it will come to you. When I'm walking the streets, I don't have that kind of concentration. Nor do I want to be writing when I'm not writing."

The thing is, this unfussiness also defines Roth's disregard, which comes with none of the accoutrement most people use (unthinkingly) to show disregard. No wandering eyes. No leaning back in his chair. No folding of hands behind the head. Philip Roth is entirely present when he disregards you, his body still, his eyes fixed on yours, his hands at rest on the table in front of him, his feet flat on the floor.