If you're new to my blog, let me introduce myself. My name is James McDougall, and this is my blog. I usually share general purpose advice, edgy philosophical opinions, and casual memes. Thanks for reading!
Growing up, I had the best life ever – two parents that loved me, plenty of food, lots of toys, and a baby brother. I had all the things that should make a boy happy. But as I got older, I reached a point where I wasn’t happy. Even then, there was no shortage of food, no shortage of loving relationships, and no shortage of fun things to do. Yet, despite all this, in the cold dark hours of the night, my mind would roil with despondence to the point that I couldn’t sleep. Have you ever been there? The form of despondence is irrelevant. It calls into question your belief system and your hope for the future. And it all hurts the same. So what’s keeping us all up at night?
So why?
This gap between a seemingly perfect lifestyle and perfect contentment that keeps so many of us up at night is the failure to achieve existential happiness. Now, the definition of existential happiness is not a simple one. Throughout this post, I will continue to explore existential happiness. For now, you can think of existential happiness as the final step of happiness, the happiness where everything else falls into place for your life and you can call yourself "truly" happy.
In psychological terms, existential happiness would be the happiness described in existential positive psychology. Dr. Paul T. P. Wong of
ExistentialPsychology.org
says in his article "The six ultimate questions of human existence" that some of the main questions about which existential happiness revolve are "How can I be happy? Why am I bored? Why am I so dissatisfied with life? What is the good life? Is this all there is to life?" These questions are existential because they're not situational. They are general questions about the state of happiness rather than what particular things create happy feelings. So these are the questions I seek to answer. I honestly think they are the most important.
So how do we achieve existential happiness?
I see three big ideas which make up existential happiness:
Its okay to be sad. If you feel sad about being sad, then you’ll just be more sad. So stop it.
Happiness is made up of a bunch of little things that make us happy.
Understand that existential happiness is different. Its the culmination of all other forms of happiness.
Lots of people think that sadness is wrong. They treat it like an illness, which they treat with pills. However, by treating sadness with pills, we are treating the feelings themselves, rather than their source. This leads to a sort of repression as people ignore the root causes of their unhappiness. British priest and author Giles Fraser supports this idea in his news column “Taking pills for Unhappiness Reinforces the Idea That Being Sad Is Not Human.” As quoted from his article, "Sometimes I am just sad. Sometimes pissed off. Sometimes smothered in darkness. But we often lump all these experiences together simply because pharmaceutical companies have developed a certain sort of treatment." I think most of us would agree with Giles that it's common to feel those sorts of things. And I think we would all agree that there's no need to take medication for those feelings. The truth is that being sad in itself does not cause physical harm. Prolonged sadness can make us gain a little weight or have high blood pressure, but so can being happy for too long ;)
Little things make us happy. As the Peanuts creator
Charles M. Schulz
said, “Happiness is a warm puppy.” And it really is! Warm puppies
release oxytocin
in our bodies, which makes us chemically happier, like a happy pill . But happiness isn't just warm puppies. And it isn't drugs. Everyone knows that. It’s a lot of things. It’s relationships, a warm roof over our head, good food, and a nice new sweater. Without one of those things, we may be unhappy until we get it. But that’s good, because that unhappiness drives us to achieve things that make us more happy.
The problem with pills is that they might cause you to ignore some aspect of happiness which you haven't really completed yet. For example, anti-depression medication obfuscates feelings of loneliness, whose elimination is a key part of achieving happiness at the relationships level of the pyramid. If we try to short circuit happiness by using pills, we may lose motivation to achieve more meaningful forms of happiness as the pills give us a false sense of happiness based on chemicals. Other drugs and experiences help us forget pain, whether it be physical or emotional. While forgetting physical pain may be useful, simply forgetting emotional pain from a relationship can cause us to move onto another level without resolving something lower.
Take the example of someone who just got out of a bad relationship. Imagine the reason this person got into such a bad relationship was because they had a tumultuous childhood which encouraged them to have negative habits. In response to the breakup, they work longer hours in their job, which they find boring. But the longer hours and focus on work allow them to forget all the bad things that have happened in their past. Eventually, they become a manager at their work. They are happy to become manager, and enjoy all the perks that come with it. However, this person isn't existentially happy. They have successfully achieved something that few others ever will, and they're near the "top of the happiness pyramid", but they can't reach the top because they aren't happy in other areas of their life. This analogy serves to show that you can't just skip a level of happiness. You have to achieve each level before moving on, otherwise you won't be completely happy.
So what is this happiness pyramid I’ve been talking about? I base my conception off Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs , which begins with basic needs like food, water, and sleep. Oh god, sleep. Once those needs are satisfied, we focus on safety needs. Then comes relationships, esteem, and, finally, self-actualization.
The most nebulous idea on the pyramid. Now, translating Maslow's hierarchy of needs to "James's hierarchy of happiness", each level of Maslow's hierarchy can be converted to a different type of happiness like this:
Tier
Maslow's idea
My conversion to happiness
Examples
0
Physical needs
Physical happiness
Good food, exercise
1
Safety needs
Situational happiness
Sitting on the couch after along day of work
2
Belongingness and love
Relationship happiness
Easy. Hugs from loved ones
3
Esteem needs
Accomplishment happiness
The feelings after getting an A on a paper you worked hard on
4
Self-Actualization
Existential happiness
???
Why am I still not sure about existential happiness? I could easily fill it in right now-but only for myself. I would put "All those other examples happening at once." If all those things came to happen on the same day, at the same time, I would consider myself "truly" happy. Now, you may not agree with that. But there's no doubt that when everything is going our way, we no longer feel that terrible craving for something more. The questions defined by Doctor Paul no longer gnaw at our stomach. Our current life situation is enough. An article by
Elite Daily
echoes this idea, saying "What you have now was once everything you strove to attain. Just because something becomes repetitive does not mean it needs to be replaced." So long as you have things at each level of the pyramid that make you happy, you are already at the top of the pyramid.
I remember the other day when I was asked a friend whether they were truly happy:
Me: “So dude, real talk, are you happy?”
Dude: “Real talk dude, I mean, I’m not sad…”
Me: “True”
That’s pretty much what my third point is about. How do we achieve that sort of existential happiness, where we're no longer sad? I believe that as long as we have happiness in each tier of the pyramid, we can realize existential happiness for ourselves.
However, this means that self-actualization and existential happiness are less defined than the other tiers of the pyramid. The other tiers apply some sort of criteria to the types of things inside them. But there is no constraint on the number of ways people can be existentially happy since the only criteria is that one particular set of things makes the individual happy.
This makes intuitive sense, because most people would say that happiness is subjective: that it depends on the individual, their background, and their experiences. That's effectively what I'm trying to prove here. Because of this, we can't understand existential happiness when we try to give it finite boundaries. Each individual's happiness is different.
Here are some examples...
We wouldn't say that people in Europe are less happy because they don't play American football. Maybe for a particular individual, children are the key factor in propelling them to the top of the pyramid. But we wouldn't then say that someone without children can never achieve existential happiness. From my definition, they can still be existentially happy by finding satisfaction in each successive level of the pyramid.
But that's not really new news, is it? Psychologists already define happiness as "Subjective Well-Being" as mentioned in this article by Piore. This seems to encompass all forms of happiness. So what new idea am I adding to this conversation? I'm proposing that the reason for the confusion around existential happiness that keeps us all up at night is because existential happiness is made up of all other kinds of happiness.
Why do I think this?
Each tier of Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a type of happiness
Different things make different people happy at each tier
Existential happiness can only be achieved by being happy in every other tier
Existential happiness is achieved by the individual when they understand what makes them happy at each step
Thus, there is no definitive way to define a path to existential happines that is true for everyone
So what does this all mean?
The only way to be “existentially” happy is to be happy in all simpler areas of life, without short circuiting any of the steps. And the reason that seems so subjective is because everyone’s life situation is different. Comfort needs may look different for different people. The number of relationships a person needs to be happy may be different. And the desire to feel esteemed may come from different sources. Because of these generalities, the final step in the pyramid may be confusing to outsiders, but it should make total sense to the individual in question. Whatever makes the individual happy subjectively is the most important.
It follows, then, that if the individual has achieved every task which they deem to be subjectively important, then they will achieve the highest level of happiness.
That's it. It's much less complicated than we make it out to be.
So if you're unhappy...
Look at what your priorities are. Look at what's important to you. If what's important to you is slightly unrealistic, be honest with yourself. It's possible that you'll be happier if you first try to find satisfaction in the lower tiers of the happiness pyramid. I'm not saying you have to limit yourself. But as a starting point, be happy with the small things until you reach that point of actualized happiness. That way you can avoid skipping steps and preventing yourself from achieving the final level of happiness.
So wake up today. Make yourself breakfast. Go outside and look at the sky. Smile at the next person you bump into. Gain trust with others by being honest. Be truly happy. Today.
