Are you Happy as a Clam?
There aren’t a whole lot of things that we all agree on these days. However, I think it’s fair to say that just about all of us are in favor of happiness – certainly our own and that of our children, family, and others we care about.
But what the heck does happiness mean and how do we achieve it? Most associate happiness with pleasure, contentment and/or accomplishment but these things can mean very different things to different people. For example, while some get a great thrill when they track and shoot a deer, others are completely repulsed by it. This point is humorously driven home by the unforgettable Mona Lisa Vito (Marisa Tomei) in the classic comedy “My Cousin Vinny” when her New Jersey boyfriend, Vinny Gambini (Joe Pesci), asks her what pants he should wear for his deer hunting trip with the Alabama prosecutor:
“Imagine you’re a deer. You’re prancing around. You get thirsty. You spot a little brook. You put your little deer lips down to the cool, clear water. BAM! A fucking bullet rips off part of your head. Your brains are lying on the ground in little bloody pieces. Now I ask you, do give a fuck what kind of pants the son-of-a-bitch who shot you was wearing?”
Scientists from the University of Wisconsin have honed in on the part of the brain that they believe is associated with feelings of happiness- no it’s not from the cheesehead they routinely wear on Sundays, but rather something called the ventral striatum. But how can we stimulate that region more frequently short of medicating to increase serotonin levels?
Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Waldinger has devoted much of his life’s work to studying happiness. He and his colleagues have been tracking the mental and physical state of the same group of 724 folks incredibly since 1938 to attempt to measure their happiness at different stages in their lives: when they began the study 268 were sophomores attending Harvard and 456 were teenagers from poor neighborhoods in Boston. Based on nearly 80 years of research, Waldinger has come to some definitive conclusions.
It turns out that those who discount the value of wealth or fame in achieving happiness (often said to be folks without either) are actually right. Having good health also did not take home the crown, though finding happiness did significantly increase one’s health. Nor did loving your job, being passionate about pottery or pinochle, or fulfilling your lifelong goal to climb Everest or play with the sea lions in the Galapagos. Even the Red Sox finally winning the World Series after 86 years of futility did not get a nod in Waldinger’s analysis of these Bostonian guinea pigs.
Rather, the single most important factor in achieving happiness was the development of strong personal relationships. It was the quality and depth of those relationships, not the number of them, that really mattered. As noted, those who achieved greater happiness had measurably better health and lived longer. On the flip side, the absence of meaningful relationships or loneliness caused chronic stress which not only produced unhappiness, but also resulted in a physical deterioration of the body over time as well as a shorter lifespan. For those more interested in the source, you can check out the fatherly Dr. Waldinger and his Ted Talk on this subject at: https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness.
And one of the best ways for acquiring and maintaining strong relationships? Show people that they are a priority to you by providing them with your full and undivided attention. I hope that anyone under 30 and those addicted to their phone are sitting down away from any sharp objects – this may mean disconnecting from electronic devices when in the presence of someone with whom you wish to have a meaningful relationship. In other words, if you want to be happy as a clam you may have to dial back your smart phone usage a bit. Either that or move to Iceland where purportedly the happiest people on earth reside. It must be their attitude and culture – can’t be the temperature.
In any case, I think it’s time to change the assessment of whether one has achieved happiness by reference to a mollusk. While some clams can be quite colorful (see photo above of giant clam in the Maldives), looks aint everything. Clams have no brain. They are obese (some weigh in excess of 400 pounds). They never have sex (they merely spawn). And to top things off, most have a very short lifespan (some species only live one year). So if that’s what it means to be happy, I’ll take a pass.
Photo Copyright: Blue Orange Studio, 123 rf.com
