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The Science of Happiness
Personally, I have a bad habit of cancelling appointments with friends the night before or in the morning of the very day. That is because even just a week before the meeting, I’m expectant to chat away with friends for a long time and have some tasty food, so I make an appointment. But when the promised day comes, preparing to go out and riding on a bus to the meeting place feels too much tiresome. Before I got to read this book, I had thought my action like this was merely a wicked habit. After I finished reading this, however, I came to realize that the reason I behaved in that way was because I had not predicted the future correctly, and it was a process where various psychological factors play their parts. In this way, there are lots of errors when we are anticipating what is to come, and a wrong prediction like the one I made can cast a long shadow on the overall happiness in our lives.
Growing up to twenty, I have always placed more weight on the happiness that ‘will’ come than that exists right now. Even if the future is uncertain for me, I strived to live successfully in the future for I regarded a material success was one requisite for a happy life. I had spent a lot of time on study, was admitted to a prestigious high school and a university, and as an undergraduate, thought that receiving good grades and getting employed in large enterprises was very important. Actually, I accomplished relatively many goals compared to my peers. Though I have gained some achievements, there are many other things I had to give up in order to do so. To cite an instance, I did not equate a high GPA with happiness, but thought that a low GPA would reduce my future happiness. Thus, I cut down on time to meet friends or to participate in club activities against my will and spent more time doing assignments or reviewing class notes. By my own definition of happiness, I must have been happy because I was building a firm footing for my future. On second thought, however, throughout my twenty years there were full of worries and anxieties about the future. It feels like 『stumbling on happiness』 is pointing out that I had a false notion of happiness.
According to the book, I was wrongly predicting the future. I had foreseen ‘Receiving good grades will bring happiness in the future’, but good grades only provide me with transitory satisfaction; it was way different from ‘happiness’. In reality, on feeling satisfied, I was sitting on thorns for another thing to worry in the future. If this vicious cycle keeps repeating, I would never taste a sense of happiness till my life ends. After all, I finally was awaking to the wrongness of thinking that happiness in the future was more important that happiness in the present. Furthermore, I became aware that my obsession over material factors of happiness was also a mistaken idea. As of now, it is impossible to know what I would feel happy for in the future, and if I do manage to anticipate that, it is not a reliable prediction. Worrying about how I could be happy right now is of more significance for making my life happier. “It is important to improve oneself for the future, but sacrificing small happiness in the present in order to do so is a folly.” Although I now realized this, it would be very difficult to change my lifestyle to this day. From now on, I will try to increase the portion of happiness I can gain in my daily life, such as the pleasure from relations with people, and reaping good health from exercise.