Thoughts on the pursuit of happiness

I was speaking to someone last week and stumbled across something that I hadn't thought of in a while: the hedonic treadmill. The model says that good and bad events temporarily affect happiness but a person usually quickly returns to a neutral state.

People fill their lives with the acquisition of things that have meaning to them. Often it's money, status, possessions or people (e.g. having a more beautiful girlfriend). Once these goals are achieved happiness results. That's the assumption. In fact what often happens is the happiness is short lived and the next goal comes up. This is the treadmill.

In my mind it is represented by a hamster in a wheel. It's the futility of desire. The satisfaction of achieving a target quickly fades and the next rung in the hamster's wheel becomes the new goal.

One aspect of the psychology behind this effect was explained to me by a drugs and alcohol counsellor. He spoke of the work of Jorge Luis Borges who wrote about labyrinths and mazes of life. Life itself is a corridor. The maze is a construct of the mind, the winding paths and twists and turns of the hedonic treadmill. Maze-dwellers travel through the maze seeking the end - the completion of their goals - but in the end they return to the corridor upon achieving success and the mind creates another maze with new twists and turns. This is a human trait.

Awareness of this effect is useful but troubling to me. This paper makes an important point.
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The theory, which has gained widespread acceptance in recent years, implies that individual and societal efforts to increase happiness are doomed to failure
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It's as though there is no hope for human happiness.

I've tried to live with a new understanding over the past few months. I don't remember who said it but
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The secret to happiness is realising you don't have to be happy.
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It's not a positive message nor one that's given me much happiness, but then I wasn't looking for it.

Reflecting on my conversation with the Rastafarians last night makes me think this quote is a more important idea. It's a quote from Bertrand Russell.
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I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.
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Most other people are more optimistic about the potential for people's happiness. There's a wonderful piece by Polly Toynbee published in The Guardian and reposted on this site where she speaks of her hopes that society will shift from a Gross Domestic Product-orientated measure of success to Gross Domestic Happiness. It was hoped to become a reality in the UK before the financial crisis and change in government.

In my own life I've eschewed the hedonic treadmill as much as possible. I've forsaken the wealth of my parents and the opportunities of wealth my education gives me. I've battled the internal desires to have more and want what other people have though it was yet another thing I failed at. It gave me access to valuing the small pleasures as much as someone else might enjoy a fine wine or dream holiday. Cheap wines taste like Chateauneuf du pape and discovering my local area is a substitute for the holidays I used to have.  Accepting my desire to have more was the same desire that millionaires feel when comparing themselves to billionaires helped me understand a little bit more about what was valuable.

My home is where I rest my head. My kingdom is where my feet touch the ground. My wealth is my brain, my heart, my soul and what I do with them.

Misery will come and go but it's the same for everyone.