Interesting v. Happy
In conjunction with Momalom’s “Five for Ten Challenge,” today’s perennially-popular theme is Happiness.
Posted by Elizabeth
About a year ago a friend of mine, who I hadn’t seen in nearly 13 years, reconnected with me via the magic that is Facebook. After catching up on our respective lives through email, she asked me point blank, “Are you happy?” The question made me squirm. “Sure I’m happy,” I hastily replied. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t exactly the truth, and my less-than-honest response nagged at me every time I saw her name pop up on my Facebook newsfeed.
Yesterday, Anne wrote that she considers herself a fundamentally happy person whose baseline emotion – while she has rough days – is essentially happy. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I’m her opposite on this matter, I also wouldn’t call myself a fundamentally happy person. Moreover, I’m not sure I want to be a happy person; I’ve struggled with this dawning awareness for a number of years. Isn’t happiness the American dream, our birthright that we should all be striving to attain? Who doesn’t want to be happy? But recently I’ve begun to wonder if happiness is really where it’s at.
This matter was brought home to me when I stumbled upon Penelope Trunk’s blog post Do You Overemphasize Happiness?, in which she concludes, after devoting three years of her life to studying happiness research, that she’d rather be interesting than happy (she makes the assumption that you have to choose between the two). And as I read her words, it occurred to me that I think I’d rather be interesting than happy, too. On our recent trip to Croatia, we stayed up entirely too late one evening with our Croatian friends and hosts, Tonci and Mladenka, discussing all manner of interesting topics, from the war in former Yugoslavia to factory farming. As we made our way to bed bleary-eyed, apologizing to our hosts for keeping them up so late, Mladenka said brightly, “It’s okay. You are both such interesting people.” My heart swelled, and I realized that it was the greatest compliment that anyone could ever give me.
Mladenka’s not alone. People more often describe me as “interesting” than “happy,” and this subject of finding happiness is a recurrent theme in the letters that Anne and I write to one another. (Believe it or not, after nearly a year of blogging together, there is still enough material to fill pages of paper each month.) The fun thing about having a friend like Anne who has a PhD in counseling psychology is that she can offer up all sorts of theories on what could otherwise be a frustrating, dead-end conversation. Often, these theories are accompanied by highly sophisticated charts and diagrams explaining said theories. In Anne’s last letter, she offered me this gem:
Elizabeth = Interesting = Content!
Over the past seven years of our friendship, Anne has always held me up as the champion of an interesting life. When I’ve wondered if I should be making better choices – happier choices – she has been the first to jump in and say, “But you make interesting choices.” When I asked her the question that Penelope Trunk posed to her readers – must you choose between being happy and interesting? – Anne boldly responded that I could have both. “I think you’ll always be someone who wants to grow and expand yourself, but I don’t think that makes you unhappy or tortured. And it does make you interesting.”
I suddenly realized that I could be both happy and interesting, because what makes me happy is pursuing an interesting life. In other words, pursuing happiness for the sake of calling myself a happy person doesn’t really do it for me. But being engaged in an interesting life, and surrounding myself with people who are themselves interesting and interested? This brings me immeasurable happiness. Anne’s equation was spot-on (someone give that girl a PhD!), and that brings a tremendous source of relief, as being interesting feels much easier, more attainable, and far less esoteric than being happy.
So go on: the next time you see me, call me interesting – or happy. You choose.
Do you think you have to choose between being happy and interesting, or can you have both? If you had to pick, would you choose being interesting or being happy? Do you tend more towards one or the other? Do you have a friend like Anne who boils down complex psychological theories into nifty equations?
May 13th, 2010 at 6:37 am
Oh I do love a good equation:) I’m glad you’re finding contentment with YOU are…be it interesting, happy, content, and on some days…a combination of the 3. And I’ll throw in one final word for good measure. Authenticity. If you’re living an authentic life–interesting or now–I believe contentment and happiness often follow.
May 13th, 2010 at 8:35 am
i found myself completely sucked into the interesting v. happy line of thought. i have also been primarily described as interesting. and have struggled with the question of ‘am i happy?’. thank you for sharing.
May 13th, 2010 at 10:02 am
I like the analogy of happy and interesting. I think facing challenges and questioning yourself are pathways to happiness. Sometimes it is about getting to the core of you.
Thanks for an insightful post.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:26 pm
To me contentment and happiness is definitely present when pursuing endeavors that interest me. And it seems safe to say that a person that pursues their interests is going to be perceived by others as interesting. Moreso when those interests are varied and involve seeking personal growth, like it sounds like with you, Liz.
I would definitely say that Anne was right on, and your realization that both are intertwined seems like a great acknowledgement.
It’s nice to re-evaluate concepts and things that we tend to pit against one another sometimes, and to discover how they relate, rather than simply deciding to choose one or the other.
May 13th, 2010 at 1:40 pm
I think I am one of “those” people who overemphasizes what happiness really means.
sadly enough with all my searching leaves little time to pay attention to the few times I am truly happy.
Excellent post
May 13th, 2010 at 1:49 pm
Oh, I learn so much from you two.
No, I don’t think interesting and happy are mutually exclusive. I hope they aren’t!
Elizabeth, this reminds me of Gretchen Rubin’s advice in The Happiness Project: Be Gretchen. You have to figure out what is *your* source of happiness. It’s so unique and totally personal. It’s easy to think, “I should read more poetry,” or “I should take that pottery class with my friend,” or whatever. But do you really like poetry and pottery, or are you just following others? What makes me happy might be torture to you.
May 13th, 2010 at 2:31 pm
This doesn’t answer your question, but I think if you try to be either of them you’ll fail miserably at both. I sort of feel like this is along the same lines as “life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans”. Knowing yourself and what you enjoy is what makes someone interesting and happy.
May 13th, 2010 at 3:02 pm
Thanks to everyone who has weighed in thus far! This is a question I’ve been pondering for months, so it’s great to see so many different reactions and responses to this. One interesting distinction that I didn’t delve into is the difference between interesting and interestED. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that engaging in things in which you’re interested (a form of knowing oneself and “being you”) are what makes one happy. Being interesting is a whole other beast altogether.
May 14th, 2010 at 2:41 am
For me happy and interesting are both off the table. I have a running experience with being called interesting – but not meant in a nice way. So when I hear it in reference to me, my neck hairs prickle.
But I know what YOU mean about being interesting. And you are. In the best way.
Happy needs too much comment time to go into.
I end.
May 14th, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Oh I love love love this post. Love it…because I so clearly identify with it. I, too, am not one people would describe as “happy.” “Interesting” much more adequately fits the bill there. And I think that after a lot of living, and a lot of internal struggle, I have come to the same conclusions as you. And now, thanks to your added insight from Anne, I feel a bit calmer about it all.
This is just glorious. Thank you.
May 14th, 2010 at 10:15 pm
“THE FRIDAY NIGHT QUIZ”
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“Black and white are not generally considered true colors; black is said to result from the absence of color, and white from the presence of all colors mixed together.”
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Notching this concept up a little . . . . . . .
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True happiness is the absence of _____________.
Unhappiness is the presence of _______________.
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OR
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True happiness is the absence of ____________.
Unhappiness is the presence of_______________.
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How would YOU complete these sentences? Do you believe your completed sentences to be “universally true” for yourself and others, true to yourself and possibly some others, or simply true to just yourself?
All quizzes will be graded by a panel of experts and returned to you no later than the beginning of the Autumnal Equinox, September 22, 2010.