Happiness is pretty much a universal request. I mean, who doesn't want to be happy? I am not counting snotty, self-righteous teenagers who wear all black and complain for a living....they all come around anyways when they get their first real job in their 20's and mommy and daddy no longer fund their self-pity.
There is all kinds of interesting research on happiness; interesting, but often useless. I was having a conversation with some friends about happiness when a particularly nerdy friend (yeah, I said it) mentioned an article she had read in The Economist; which is useful, but never interesting. Now, I will go off on a slight tangent here because I do not want to mislead any readers. I do not read The Economist; I actually do not really know what it is. I read Lucky, Us Weekly and occasionally People....though I personally feel People has an overly high word:picture ratio. But I really believe in diversity so I give this friend a chance. Well, I outwardly scoff at her choice in periodicals, and recently gave her a tutelage on Jon & Kate...but that is as close as it gets to me actually embracing this kind of thought diversity.
Anyways, back to happiness. The Economist claims that happiness is all relative. So, if you hang out with people dumber and poorer than you, you will be happy. I may be paraphrasing the research a bit here. The most interesting finding was that men are extremely specific in their happiness relativity - their happiness depends greatly on whether they make more money than their wive's sister's husband. Now, I'm not sure what happens when their wife doesn't have a sister....maybe then it is a brother. If the wife is an only child, then the poor dude probably has to go to a first cousin or something. Family trees will be helpful in this exercise.
But the gist of it is this: if you are a man, find a mate who has a sister who is married to someone super poor - maybe someone in prison. If you are a woman - surround yourself with really poor friends - I would suggest the homeless. Then you will be extraordinarily happy.
An alternative would be to do what I do: read about Jon & Kate (8 kids!) and Speidi (married to Spencer Pratt!) all day long and just be grateful that I'm not them.
Your friend who reads the occasional Economist article sounds very interesting, smart, funny, charming, happy and good-looking. You should probably continue to try and get life tips from her. In this month's issue of another similarly intellectual magazine, Reader's Digest, it says that the #1 key to happiness is getting plenty of sleep.
Posted by: Kendall | August 05, 2009 at 10:05 PM