An old friend is a psychologist in private practice who’s been seeing patients for more than 30 years. We hug when we meet for coffee and he always says, “You’re fine. How am I?” Lately, he hasn’t seemed too good: business is steady, but he looks tired, and maybe he’s tired of his patients. I ask him if that’s the case.
“I don’t think so,” he answers, after a Freud worthy pause. “I’m tired of how the challenge of ‘the unexamined life isn’t worth living’ has become synonymous with ‘How come I’m not happy?’ Happiness has replaced self-knowledge as our life’s purpose.”
“I’m not sure that’s a bad thing,” I replied. “I’ll take happiness over enlightenment any day. Especially if I can skip the navel-gazing.”
“That’s like celebrating Easter Sunday without recognizing Good Friday,” he says. “Let’s face it: life is hard. And then you die. But ‘hard’ doesn’t always mean ‘bad.’ Genuine happiness has the feeling of gratitude as its foundation. Imagine taking a drink of water when you’re really thirsty versus carrying around a bottle of high-end designer water all day. Thirst and toting a plastic bottle around are both experiences, but thirst — a hard thing – is fundamentally more valuable because it results in a feeling of gratefulness when satisfied. And it’s impossible to feel unhappy when you feel grateful.”
“How do you measure gratefulness? How do you know if it’s real?”
“By the sense of relief you feel. The feeling you get when a good test result comes back from the doctor. When a loved one returns home from war unscathed. When American Express doesn’t send a hitman after you this month. Happiness that isn’t grounded in the experience of relief and gratitude is usually transitory and taken for granted. It’s like having 500 Facebook friends instead of one real friend.”
“Do you tell patients to count their blessings?”
“No, of course not. But I ask them to see their issue – say it’s depression – as a gift. Does their depression make them more empathetic? Less judgmental of others? Those are good things.”
“What are you grateful for?”
“You’re going to pay for the coffee.”