JUNE 5, WEDNESDAY

HAPPINESS

All the way through Sapiens Yuval Harari questions whether each new form of living together and new world view made people happier or not. He admits that happiness or satisfaction is an illusive term and hard to measure or even know.

But he wonders if hunter gatherers who spent only part of the day foraging and had time to sit around the fire and tell stories had a fuller life than farm hand peasants whose work in the fields was from dawn to dusk with much of what the produced taxed away by the lord of the manor who spent the surplus on castles and art and music. And then he wonders if having all the things that we want and along with living in complete comfort with plenty to eat and good health care makes us happier or not. He even wonders if happiness, feeling good, comes from a chemical reaction within us, serotonin, with some people, because of their DNA, being naturally happy and some people being naturally unhappy regardless of how many things they have. In my case, the number of things that I have filled my house with are beginning to weigh on me and have become an Augean Stable that needs to be cleaned out, a task that makes me unhappy. I’ve discovered that I can be quite happy with almost no stuff as I wander the world with only a carry-on bag. I am able to resist almost all seductive advertisements to buy more things and am even beginning to eat less because the more I eat the less happy I am.

The people at the Mermaids and Pirates parade this last week seemed to me to be happy. But what made them happy was celebrating in public and letting loose for a day. It wasn’t things. In fact you couldn’t tell the people who were rich from those who were barely making it, they all looked alike, all looked ridiculous, and were all having a great time.