Ampersand Gazette #70
Welcome to the Ampersand Gazette, a metaphysical take on some of the news of the day. If you know others like us, who want to create a world that includes and works for everyone, please feel free to share this newsletter. The sign-up is here. And now, on with the latest …
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Are We Happy Yet?
Three times a day my phone pings with a notification telling me that I have a new happiness survey to take. As the weeks of survey-taking went by, I had another, more paralyzing thought: that this focus on my feelings was instilling a new kind of anxiety. The survey is just one example from an increasingly crowded field of tools offering consumers the chance not just to contemplate their happiness but also to measure it, track it, schedule it and optimize it.
But feelings aren’t the same as other kinds of health metrics, like steps and heart rate and liver function. There is a great deal of disagreement on how even to measure happiness and fairly weak evidence that doing so makes us significantly happier. Less considered is the question: Could tracking happiness make us feel worse?
In the West, a new idea emerged in the 18th century: that happiness was “something that human beings are supposed to have,” as Darrin M. McMahon, the chair of the history department at Dartmouth, told me. “God created us in order to be happy. And if we’re not happy, then there’s something wrong with the world or wrong with the way we think about it.” Mr. McMahon, the author of “Happiness: A History,” said this is how we get the idea that “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are inalienable rights endowed by man’s creator.
The Allure of Magic Numbers
The study of happiness created a focus on how individuals can measure and boost their own happiness. … The questionable idea that we can achieve some standardized, actionable accounting of our fleeting emotions is now baked into every app that asks us to record our feelings on some arbitrary scale.
The Trap of Emotional Optimization
For all the supposed happiness-boosting strategies that aren’t supported by evidence, one of the few things that might move the needle is social contact. Engaging with other people as our imperfect selves shatters the illusion of control that we have when we’re attempting to optimize our moment-to-moment feelings.
Excerpted from an Opinion Essay By Jessica Grose in The New York Times
“Are We Happy Yet?”
August 8, 2024
Are we happy yet? Argh. I was reminded of my little brothers whining “Are we there yet?” on family vacations which started, lo, these many long years ago, and ended with long drives in wooden-sided station wagons.
I don’t know. Are you happy yet?
One of the great metaphysical secrets of life is that happiness is a choice.
But do we know it? Mostly? No, we don’t.
We also tend to hang our happiness on ludicrous things that have nothing to do with happiness. In its original sense, the word happy referred to what happened. Hence the word, happenstance.
Instead, we pin our happiness to future possibilities—you will note, I did not say probabilities. Possibilities. When I lose another seven pounds, then I’ll be happy. When so-and-so marries me, then I’ll be happy. When I graduate, then I’ll be happy.
It’s okay if you want to do happiness this way, but it’s also entirely unnecessary. People like to bandy the words unconditional love around (as if humans are even capable of that; we are not), but how about unconditional happiness?
Can you just let yourself be … happy? Without conditions? It’s a whole lot easier than conditional happiness, believe me. Conditional happiness means you’re perpetually the donkey with the carrot on a stick in front of you, or the shop proprietor with a sign in the window that never changes: Ice Cream Sale Tomorrow.
One thing I can tell you for sure is that measuring happiness in the way Ms. Grose experienced for this article is a surefire GUARANTEE of UNhappiness.
First, it’s not measurable. Happiness can’t be quantified any more than goodwill can.
Second, whilst measuring is a favorite occupation of the West, it supplies a false sense of control. Ever noticed that? We Westerners default to things that can be measured. Standardized tests, anyone? Rather than, oh, critical thinking, or lateral thinking, or thinking at all. Measurement is waaaaaaay over-rated.
Third, measuring has a side-effect that is ruinous for the subject of happiness, and that, Belovèd, is comparison. Obscure philosopher John Fortescue wrote, “Comparisons are odious,” in 1470. It’s as true today as it was then.
What makes you happy, dear one, is thoroughly, unadulteratedly personal to you. Stop taking surveys, would you? Stop measuring happiness, would you? Stop comparing, would you? And CHOOSE IT. RIGHT NOW.
Repeat after me: I choose to be happy—for no good reason. Just cuz I wanna.
Go ahead, I double-dare you.
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The Joyless Quest for Peak Happiness
To the Editor:
“The Joyless Quest for Peak Happiness,” by Jessica Grose (Opinion, Aug. 11), reminds me that the Buddhist understanding of happiness is the one that’s the most gratifyingly simple, easy to grasp and comprehensive in its scope … but hard to practice.
Happiness is freedom from attachment — to wealth, to material comforts, to success, to family and friends, to future outcomes.
Enjoy these things when they come to you, but be ready to let them go because they are all transitory.
The art of simple engagement in the present moment: That’s the ticket.
Peter Clothier
Laguna Beach, Calif.
A Letter to the Editor on the article above by Peter Clothier in The New York Times
“On The Joyless Quest for Peak Happiness”
August 23, 2024
Freedom from attachment is a lovely idea, especially if you’re a Buddhist, but for those of us who are not … I think it might be best left in the practices of Pema Chodron or the Dalai Lama, and maybe even Dolly Parton, but definitely not me.
I believe this because mostly Westerners take freedom from attachment to be detachment, and that’s not what it is at all.
Certainly of the many Western Buddhists I’ve met, a lot of them use this principle as a way to get away with not caring for others or about others. “Oh,” they say, “I am to be free of attachment, so I can’t care about what happens to you.” Garbage. Care is the core of being human.
Another of the major principles of Buddhist practice is compassion. So there’s the care built in to the practice.
It’s not detachment, it’s non-attachment, and we all know that Westerners do not not do things very well. Mr. Clothier says it well. When the blessings of life come to you, enjoy them, but don’t base your identity on them. Easy come, easy go might be another way to say this.
Dear One, when someone sends the Dalai Lama a limousine to go to the United Nations to give a speech, he doesn’t send it away, and insist upon a yak. He rides in the car, and if a yak is waiting to take him back to the hotel after his speech, he gets on the yak.
The Buddhists know that the one constant in life is change—what happens—and it’s relentless, ongoing, and forever.
Enjoy your everything on this Labor Day weekend, and keep choosing happiness for all our sakes. Please. We need your happiness just as much as we need our own.
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Here’s a universal affirmation. It works every time, for everyone, always and forever …
Dr. Susan Corso
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And in publishing news … I am thrilled to be able to show you my new banners for fiction and nonfiction.
A BIG SHOUT-OUT and BUCKETS OF HAPPY GRATITUDE … to those who have read Oklahoma! Hex. I met the goal I needed, so on Friday the 13th of September, I’m doing a huge promotion of The Mex Mysteries to 637,000 households all over the world.
If you haven’t read it (or Jezebel Rising, or Attending Physician—the three permafree books that start three of my fiction series,) would you please? Go on Amazon, “purchase” a freebie, and post a sentence or two.
Reviews really are the engine that powers the career of an indie author.
It’s quite exciting to be on one Amazon Bestseller List, let alone three, and my books are!
Both Oklahoma! Hex and Gemma Eclipsing remain on the Top 100 Metaphysical Fiction List, and Gemma is still on Women’s Historical Fiction, and Historical Literary Fiction.
As I write this, today would have been my mama’s 88th Birthday. My books on those lists have made me miss her like crazy. She’d be over the moon if she were here, and I’m sure she is even now.
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As you know, my top secret series at last has a name that I can reveal to you here. It’s called:
It’s an alternative retelling of the AIDS crisis with one major historical revision, that being that humanity, instead of doing what it actually did which was a devastation to a whole generation of creative people, chose to do the right thing. I’m already over 50,000 words into Book One of the eight-book series, and ideas are flying fast and furious. This is one of my favorite places to be—in active creating.
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One of the great pleasures of working on Prismatica is that I lived in the epicenter of the AIDS Crisis on one coast, and Tony, my husband and literary partner, lived in the epicenter of the crisis on the other coast. In practice, it means we bring totally different experiences to the series, and that they enhance one another to make for a better story.
Do you have need of someone to partner with to help you with your book ideas? In all seriousness, I know a guy. He’s edited my books for twenty years, and counting. Tony Amato is a singularly outstanding (and much sought after) book coach and editor.
May I encourage you to reach out if you need what he calls book-husbanding, which includes coaching along the way? Like I said, if you need anything in your writing life, Tony Amato is the person. Without him, my books—both fiction and nonfiction—would be nowhere near as good as they are. Find him here.
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I am a serious fan of James Hillman and his archetypal psychology, a renegade movement in response to the archetypal work of C. G. Jung. I love me some renegades, of course.
This particular volume is Dr. Hillman’s take on power in the business world. He’s writing at the time (1995) when socially responsible business was a big thing. I was doing motivational speeches about peace in the workplace then.
But it also is a tender parsing of power in all its distressing disguises, to borrow from Mother Teresa. The more research I do into Shame and Pride, the more I realize that what’s under a lot of our psychological profiles is our perception of our own ability to generate and use power.
This is a third chakra quality—the one that actually comes with having a third chakra. Power. If you’ll think about it, as I have been doing lately, you’ll likely discover that you have a lot of ideas about power. Your own power. What powers others have. How to use it. Who shouldn’t have it. Who should.
The word comes from Latin roots: posse (similar to our possibility) which mean to be able. So just as it takes power to throw a softball, it also takes power to read a recipe and bake a cake. It’s one of the common denominators undergirding how we behave in life.
Give some thought to power if it draws you this week. You’ll be amazed at what you think about it, and you might want to read Dr. Hillman to get help with making some revisions of your opinions. Power, not surprisingly, is part of happiness. Go figure.
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Are you waiting for a sign?
How about this one?
This saying, bar one word, is a commonplace amongst workers
in the professional theatre,
especially performers of all stripes:
Don’t quit your day job.
Usually, it means that someone thinks you’re
not talented enough to … whatever it is you’re dreaming.
So when I saw this sign,
it provoked a bark of laughter, and
then an immediate sobering.
This is really quite a solemn message because
it’s when we quit our daydreams that hope dies.
No one who chooses to thrive has the luxury
of letting hope die, Belovèd.
No one.
Without hope, there is no reason to seek
or create meaning.
Humans can live without quite a lot, but not without meaning.
I am, without doubt, certain that And is the secret to all we desire.
Let’s commit to practicing And ever more diligently, shall we?
Until next time,
Be Ampersand.