The Happiness Challenge

            Last week was something of a bust, so I’m not going to talk about it. Not very many interesting things happened, and the interesting things weren’t very good things (with the absolute exception of care packages from my parents and grandparents- those were awesome, thank you guys!! <3 ). Instead, I’m going to talk about happiness. It’s going to be slightly less structured than the list of happy things that I wrote a while back, but it is, essentially, a list of happy things. Which makes no sense now, but hopefully will after you read the post (Note to self: I should maybe write the introductions to these things AFTER I’ve written the post... maybe we’ll try that next week. :P )

            I’m thinking about happiness this week because I signed up for this thing called “The Happiness Challenge” that MIT is doing. Essentially, each week you get a task to try to perform, and if you succeed, you get entered in drawings for prizes. I figured it would be a relatively low time commitment, it was probably a good way to get new ideas on how to be happy, and if I got some free stuff out of it, all the better. This week’s challenge is to purposefully take 3 study breaks in which you go talk to some friends. (As an aside, I might count this blog as one... I’m taking a study break, and technically I’m talking to you all. :P)

            

          Anyways, the challenge has gotten me thinking about happiness, and how there are a lot of little things in our life that can make us happy. And that made me think about how there are different levels of happiness. There’s little things that make us happy, almost without us knowing. For instance, this gif that I saw on the internet:

Run run run run run run run run (source)

Or the fact that I painted my nails and they’re now ridiculously shiny. And now that I think about it, I really shouldn’t have done that, since I’m going to have to take it off by Thursday so that I can look professional when I have a meeting with my PI (the professor in charge of the lab in which I’m UROPing). But for right now my fingers are stupidly shiny, which is making me happy.

            There are also higher level things, that make us happy for longer periods of time. Some examples of those I’ve experienced recently were the care packages I got from home, or talking to my grad student in lab. I think the difference between these things, and the shorter-term happy things is that they actively involve other people, and specifically that they actively involve other people who care about my well-being. As much as I am occasionally loathe to admit it, as humans we’re incredibly social beings. And while there are days when I really want to be alone with a good book and some tea, I’m ultimately happier on the days that I spend talking with people- whether those conversations are inane, or highly introspective, or extremely politically involved. The best conversations- the ones that often make me happiest- are those that range across those topics. Thinking about it, that’s probably because I can only have conversations like that with people who care about me, and about whom I care. Without that, it’s hard to have conversations that go very deep.

            And then, there are the things that are just totally joyful. These are the things that leave a warm feeling in your chest. [As an aside, this is apparently a scientific thing- emotions are localized in different parts of your body. Which I find incredibly bizarre, and also very cool. The paper that this finding was published in studied multiple cultures, so it seems like this might not just be a cultural thing. I’m not familiar with psychology, so I can’t say what level of credibility the paper has, but it’s interesting nonetheless. And it's published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. So it's probably pretty credible... Okay, aside over].

On a scale of warmth in your chest, I’d say that the first level of happiness I described would be similar to when you take a hot drink, and you can feel the heat traveling down your throat. It’s very noticeable, but it’s also kind of fleeting- it’s gone almost as soon as you notice it. The second level of happiness I described is more like walking into a warm building after having been outside in the cold. It’s not necessarily instantaneous- it takes a while for the tips of your ears to warm back up after having been numb for some time. But they eventually do warm up, and there’s a pleasant burning sensation that comes with that warming up. Eventually though, you equilibrate to the new temperature. You don’t necessarily forget that you’re warm; it just becomes your new state of being. I think the second level of happiness is like that- omnipresent in a way that you definitely notice if it’s missing, but the rest of the time it’s comfortably there, whether you’re thinking about it or not.

            The third level of happiness though- the pure, unadulterated joy- that one is like being curled up in a blanket in front of the fireplace, or a hug that fills a need you weren’t even aware existed (occasionally I’m not aware I need a hug... but then someone gives me a hug and everything is right with the world. That’s what I’m getting at here. I’m not entirely sure that’s a universal sensation, so I thought I should explain). This week, my unadulterated joy came from the realization that there’s more music in the world than I can ever hope to listen to... and a large percentage of it is really excellent music. My friends went to an a capella concert this weekend, and they came back with stories about how amazing it was, and how people had the most brilliant voices, and incredible talent. I was sick, so I didn’t go to the concert (my cold is one of the not-so-good things about this week), but I did reap some of the benefits, in that they brought back tales of new groups and artists that I had never heard before.

            

            These tales led to some inevitable YouTube searching for samples of these amazing musicians. And, as one is wont to do while searching things on YouTube, this led to the discovery of more amazing musicians. And this, in turn, led to the realization that I could probably listen to a different music video on YouTube every minute of every day for the next year, and not make it through all of the amazing material that people have put time and effort into making. Which is honestly incredible on so many levels. The sheer enormity of the amount of music is staggering on its own. But when you think about the fact that there are so many people out there who are willing to share their talents with the world, and that the majority of these people are virtually unknown, you realize that the world is an incredible place.

           

           For me, a lot of moments of pure, unadulterated joy, are moments like these. They’re moments that are seemingly mundane. The fact that there’s a lot of music in the world probably isn’t all that important of a realization in the grand scheme of things. But for me, it served as a reminder that we all have something to share with the world. It’s unlikely that I’ll ever be a famous musician, the way my five-year-old self planned to be. But there’s bound to be something I can share with the world. And if something I can do gives someone else a moment of pure, unadulterated joy- a moment that makes them understand warm hugs and blankets by the fireside- then I will have made the world a better place. And really, that’s all I can ask for.