I'm reading a book called Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. I love it when a body of scientific evidence confirms what I've experienced. In Gilbert's ideas, I also find help in wholeheartedly following Christ. Super brief summary of the book: we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. People are very confident in their predictions, but usually dead wrong.
For example, people tend to think riches will make them happier. Yet often lottery winners report being no happier in the long run for their winnings, or sometimes being less happy, because the presence of the money has created social tension for them. Here are a few notable quotes from rich folks (found in a different book):
"The care of $200 million is enough to kill anyone. There is no pleasure in it." - W.H. Vanderbilt
"I am the most miserable man on earth." - J.J. Astor*
"I have made millions, but they have brought me no happiness." - John D. Rockefeller
"Millionaires seldom smile." - Andrew Carnegie
"I was happier when doing a mechanic's job." - Henry Ford
Gilbert lays out several reasons we're bad at accurately predicting our feelings. I'll focus on two: our tendency to 1) leave out plenty of important and relevant information while 2) supplying lots of speculation as fact without realizing we're doing it.
My mother used to say, "if you're not happy without it, you won't be happy with it." She was referring to the fact that buying a new laptop (to use an example from my high school days) or whatever doesn't change one's day-to-day life's happiness in the long run. She was right, but why? Gilbert explains that when I was imagining myself using the computer before I got it, I only saw myself sitting at it and messaging my friends all night. I completely left out the part about how I would still have the same basic attitude toward life, still have to go to school, do homework, and deal with all the other hassles of life. Basically I left out 90% of the factors that would determine my happiness, even in a world in which I had my very own laptop. But I had conjured up such a vivid mental image that I didn't think to realize anything was missing. The image-conjuring was fine; the fact that I expected the image to become reality, not so much.
In his book, Gilbert uses an example in which he invites the reader something like, "imagine you're going to have a spaghetti dinner tomorrow night." He points out you probably did not imagine an uncooked box of pasta sitting on the counter, but likely embellished with a plate beneath, sauce to top it and maybe even side dishes and your dining companions. But none of that embellishment is contained or necessarily implied in the term "spaghetti dinner." He said all the extra information is our "brain's best guess," and when asked, we tend to feel pretty confident in our embellishments, and those guesses are usually way off base. I immediately thought of how sometimes God's leading is just one word, or a phrase, and our brains do the magic of filling in the gap and then we're shocked when things didn't turn out at all how we'd expected. We may even feel duped, but God never overpromises and underdelivers. We'd do well to check our expectations against what He actually said.
One reason our brains are skilled at filling in gaps: each of our eyes has a blind spot where the optic nerve connects in the back. Instead of just having a gaping hole or two in our field of vision, the brain does that trick Photoshop can do and pulls info from the surrounding area to create a smooth, if partly false, view for our eyes. I think this is also how improv comedy is possible, both as a performer and an audience member. We don't go into panic mode when we're given so little to work with; we just let our brains do what they are great at: make tons of stuff up and fill in the gaps.
Another faith application: to those who don't know God well, He can seem like a monster for allowing bad things to happen to good people, because commonly accepted wisdom is that going through bad things will make you unhappy. But, unexpectedly, weathering trauma can actually make someone happier in the long run and many find they would not trade our bad experiences if they could. These quotes:
"I am so much better off physically, financially, mentally, and in almost every other way."
"It was a glorious experience."
"I didn't appreciate others nearly as much as I do now."
were spoken by three people who were, respectively, forced to resign from their job in disgrace, imprisoned unjustly for 37 years, and paralyzed from the neck down. Gilbert writes that this type of response is relatively common. Wait, what? And those millionaires were unhappy? If these things can be true, then we have all the more reason to trust a sovereign God who works all things together for good, even things that feel bad or were so not in our life plan. These things being true, we find our circumstances are no excuse not to joyfully worship Him. Maybe He really does have our best interests at heart, even if we aren't getting all our wishes fulfilled. Maybe He's setting us up for greater happiness and joy than we could imagine or plan for on our own.
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*I had to look this guy up. According to Wikipedia, he was the richest man aboard the Titanic and died with a net worth of $87 million, which would be $2.13 billion by today's standards.
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