Yep – this is a word I had never seen before as well – yes – perhaps that is a reflection on my ‘ignorance’ as testified by the title of the blog, since Eudaimonia is, in fact, the highest ideal for a good life according to Aristotle.
The translation that seems most apt is “flourishing” and this is what the authors suggest to think of in The Shrink and the Sage.
The Problem With Happiness
Whilst being happy is clearly a ‘good thing’ it can also be unattainable under some circumstances – what is important to note is that the lack of happiness does not mean that “life is not good”. Happiness tends to be a ‘fleeting’ emotion – which comes and goes with our moods and feelings – whereas the feeling that we are enjoying a good life (or not) is a more long term state.
Of course, in some ways we are dealing with semantics – for some people “happy” is not just associated with being joyful, laughing and joking – it is also used for contentment and, I suppose, sufficiency. The statement, “I am happy with my life”, is probably more a reflection of eudaimonia than a reflection of extreme joy.
This is a problem with words – it is always difficult to define the meaning. Indeed it is probably more often than not that the meaning that is heard is different from the meaning that is said!! In his post to LinkedIn and Facebook yesterday Mel Schwartz said
So here we have it – as I say “I am happy” – what do you imagine I mean? It is not just that statement, of course, everything that I am writing here depends on the reader understanding what I meant. (rather than what I wrote – which to me is the same thing, but to other people may well not be – indeed probably isn’t)
This is, of course, a bit of a sidetrack away from the “be happy” them of the post, however, it is something that affects us in all parts of our lives – we instinctively assume that when we say something those who hear us will understand what is said. That’s just the way it is. That is also the root of so many misunderstandings, so many arguments, so many conflicts.
Getting back to the topic….
The sentence that particularly caught my eye – mainly because it harks back to one of the recurrent themes here – was the following:
This is the place that I ended the previous post at. We cannot know all the outside influences that will stop us achieving what we set out to achieve (and therefore stop us, presumably from being happy) because there are so many and – even when we can assess them as risks – they can at best be given a likelihood of occurrence. It is probably optimistic to say that there is a one in a million chance that we achieve precisely what we set out to achieve.
This, of course, needn’t be a problem. It is “just life” and as long as we accept the deviations from our originally intended course – and recognise that these deviations are out of our control – then we can be ‘happy’ that we were – as the previous post suggested – the best that we could.
The other significant throwback on this topic is to Viktor Frankl – whom I have talked about a number of times in this blog, but particularly in the post Inspirational Writing. Its interesting how he has come up in my life recently in so many different ways. Specifically, the reference in respect to happiness is that Frankl espoused the need for meaning – without giving your life meaning you cannot be happy (or fulfilled).
Apart from Frankl there are two other names that surfaced in this part of the book – both of them have equally appeared in my thinking, but I don’t think I have explicitly mentioned either in the blog before – they are Daniel Kahneman and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi. They both deserve to be given a lot more space than just a quick mention here – in the case of Kahneman I have read a lot of his writing and was particularly influenced by Thinking, Fast and Slow. Csikszentmihalyi, on the other hand, has so far gained entry into my thinking thanks to others writing about him. His book, Flow: The Psychology of Happiness: The Classic Work on How to Achieve Happiness is on my list to read.
So – to summarise – happiness – in the sense of unbroken joy – is patently unattainable, however, if we think of it as fulfillment or better, flourishing, then it becomes something that we must continually aim for.
Whilst doing that, we need to be continually aware that it is certain that we will fall short of what we are aiming at – usually for reasons outside of our control. There are a significant number of forces acting upon us that will likely redirect the flow of events. We are not alone!!! We cannot do anything, but it causes other things to happen – you cannot do just one thing!