The Happiness Trap, or In Praise of Having a Bad Day

“Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” the USA is the only country in the world to enshrine its citizens’ rights to happiness in its constitution. However, even the founding fathers acknowledged that happiness wasn’t merely a state of mind, but an active force: something one must strive for or pursue. Lately I’ve noticed more and more emphasis on happiness; it seems to have joined the wellness movement as a central plank. Not only should we “eat clean”, exercise, and stick crystal eggs up our unmentionables, but we should also be happy whilst we go about this.

There are many books, online courses and podcasts which claim to be able to teach you happiness. Happiness seems no longer like a state of mind, but something one can achieve, like a new pair of yoga pants or 100 Peloton workouts (the company does, in fact, have a meditation series based around – you guessed it – happiness).  Can I buy or learn happiness? Can I become good at it? Can I rate it? Is happiness a competitive sport, and if so, can I be better than you at it? 

How often should we even be happy? Is bliss sustainable for eight hours, overnight, for weeks at a time? Like a swift, can I coast on the updrafts of happiness without landing for months? 

I’m being ridiculous, of course, and it may be a distinctly grumpy British view that I’m about to put forward here, but do we really need, or deserve to be happy all the time? I recently undertook a law course which encouraged me to think more about equity, and the two sides of a dilemma. If happiness is our optimum state, what about the people who aren’t happy? Are they doing something wrong? If they can’t afford the courses and books, or the mental effort being happy seems to require, are they losers? Are we ghetto-izing unhappiness (can we actually do that? Stick all the grumps in a place together, like, for instance, Scotland?). What’s so wrong with having a bad day? Being happy isn’t an imperative and one could argue that misery is what actually pushes the levers of progress forward. When I’m happy, I rarely write. Why raise myself off the Lilo of my bliss to do something that is so hard? Happiness strips me of ambition, in a direct inversion of Thomas Merton’s adage: “When ambition ends, happiness begins.”  

So, whilst I’ll take happiness, a few pinpricks of lights every so often in the otherwise pitch night of my curmudgeonly soul, I’m all right with having a bad day too. Being just OK is good enough for me.