Happiness is made of sun but also of rain – Arthur C. Brooks

In 2007 a group of researchers began to investigate a concept that, at first glance, does not seem necessary to deepen: whether more happiness is always better than less happiness. The researchers asked university students to rate their feelings on a scale ranging from “unhappy” to “very happy” and compared the results with their academic career development (grade point average, missed lessons) and with interactions. social (number of close friends, time spent with friends). Participants who considered themselves “very happy” had a better social life, but their academic results were lower than those of those who simply described themselves as “happy”.

The authors of the research then examined data from another study that had classified the level of “cheerfulness” of a group of college freshmen and checked their income nearly two decades later, discovering that the happiest in 1976 were not among those who in the 1995 earned more. Once again, this milestone was achieved by those who described their cheerfulness as “above average”, but not by the 10 percent who described it as very high.

As in everything, even to be happy you have to compromise. Pursuing happiness by excluding other goals – a practice known as psychological hedonism – is not only a futile exercise, it can even lead to a life you don’t want, a life in which you don’t reach your full potential, in which there is a reluctance to taking risks and choosing fleeting pleasures rather than stimulating experiences that give meaning to existence.

Analytical rumination
The outcome of that study does not indicate that happiness is to be avoided, but that a hint of unhappiness can bring benefits. For example, sadness has been found to help develop our ability to solve problems. Emmy Gut, author of the book Productive and unproductive depression (Productive depression and unproductive depression) published in 1989, argues that some depressive symptoms can be a functional response to the problems of the environment around us, a response that leads us to pay attention to them trying to deal with them. In other words, when we are sad about something we may be more likely to face that situation. Psychologists call it the “analytic rumination hypothesis,” and it is documented by scientific research.

Of course, that doesn’t mean clinical depression is a good thing – extreme sadness can quickly lead people to being unable to cope with problems. And I’m not saying depression outweighs the cost-benefit analysis. But the analytic rumination hypothesis is proof that getting rid of bad feelings doesn’t automatically make us more efficient. If these emotions can help us evaluate threats, it makes sense that an excessive amount of good feelings can lead us to disregard them. The substance use literature also suggests this: in some subjects, very high levels of positive emotions have been linked to dangerous behaviors such as alcohol and drug abuse or binge eating (i.e. binge eating).

Refusing unhappiness can make us give up a full life. Indeed, as a survey conducted in 2018 among university students reveals, the fear of failure is positively correlated with the deep meaning attributed to romance, friendship and (to a lesser extent) family. When I talk to someone about the fear of obtaining negative results in life, the true origin of their fear in many cases is related to how they will feel about having failed, not the consequences of failure itself, a dynamic that resembles the mechanism by which the discomfort related to uncertainty generates more anxiety than the security of receiving bad news. To avoid these unpleasant sensations, people give up all opportunities that imply the possibility of failure.

Unpleasant decisions
Making room for positive events – such as love, career success, or otherwise – usually comes with risks. Risk does not necessarily make us happy, and a risky life will bring us disappointments. But it can also be more rewarding than a life that is always on the safe side, as the study on happiness, academic achievement and income suggests. Those who performed best at work and in school probably made decisions that were sometimes unpleasant, and even frightening.

This does not mean that we have to shy away from what makes us feel good, or that we are fools because we want to be happy. On the contrary, wishing for happiness is natural and normal. However, having the pursuit of positive feelings as your main or only goal in life – and every effort to avoid negative ones – is an expensive strategy.

Absolute happiness is impossible to achieve (at least on this Earth), and pursuing it can be dangerous and detrimental to our success. Most importantly, doing so sacrifices many of the elements that make life satisfying. As Paul Bloom, a psychologist and author of The sweet spot: The pleasures of suffering and the search for mcceaning (The weak point. The pleasures of suffering and the search for meaning): “It is the suffering that we choose to offer us the greatest opportunities for joy, meaning and personal growth”.

Happiness itself would not be happiness if the contrast we inevitably experience with sadness were missing. “A happy life cannot exist without a measure of darkness,” said Carl Jung in a 1960 interview. “The word ‘happy’ would lose its meaning if it were not counterbalanced by sadness.” You can treasure Jung’s words and commit to practicing gratitude regularly, giving thanks for the things that bring happiness as well as those that create difficulties. It will seem unnatural at first, but it will get easier every day.

Some of the most important aspects of our life are the direct result of negative feelings that have managed to sneak into us despite our efforts to block them. For example, I have three grown-up children: until recently, when they were teenagers, it was a constant head-to-head with them. My wife and I lost many nights of sleep at the time, but I wouldn’t change a single detail of those moments (now that we’ve left them behind).

There are those who take these teachings to extremes that might seem inconceivable. For example Andrew Solomon, author of The midday demon. Depression: the history, the science, the treatments, who writes: “If we imagine an iron soul worn out by pain and corroded by minor depressive disorder, we could compare major depression to a real structural failure.” But eventually Solomon discovered a way to appreciate his own depression, as he stated in an interview several years ago: “I love her because she forced me to find joy and hold on to it.”

In short, this is the paradox of a full life. Pursuing endless positivity means aiming for the two-dimensionality of a Hollywood film or a children’s book. So while suffering should never be our goal, we can strive for a rich life where we don’t just seek the sun, but also fully experience the inevitable rain.

(Translation by Davide Musso)